Dave Brubeck

Honored by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2009 for his incredible talents and lifelong accomplishments and contributions to the field, Brubeck is recognized for helping to ease jazz into the mainstream, marrying spontaneity with classical rigor, making unlikely time signatures irresistible, and adding swing to serious music. From the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s worldwide success in the 1950s and ‘60s, through the jazz opera Cannery Row Suite he created with his wife Iola Brubeck at the 2006 Monterey Jazz Festival, Brubeck continues to surprise.

His "polytonality and use of polyrhythms, combined with his uniquely american musical language," noted The New York Times, "give his music an unmistakable and accessible sound."  Crowned "the reigning elder statesman of jazz" by the Washington Post and designated nothing less than a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress, this eighty nine year old icon of West Coast cool remains impossibly young.