A nontraditional biography that sings despite its studious blocks of theory-heavy dissection.
The iconic jazz musician receives an adoring biography as unconventional and compelling as its subject.
As music journalist Clark notes, Dave Brubeck (1920-2012), “thoughtful and sensitive as he was, had been changed as a musician and as a man by the troubled times through which he lived and during which he produced…optimistic, life-enhancing art.” The author eschews a standard, chronological narrative in favor of a forensic analysis of classic Brubeck cuts like “Take Five,” “Blue Rondo á la Turk,” “Unsquare Dance,” and many more. Just as many jazz greats used modest chord progressions to underpin their masterpieces, Clark employs a throughline of his own involving the 10 days he spent interviewing Brubeck on tour in the spring of 2003 to achieve something beyond the run-of-the-mill biography. The author is “riffing” like his musical idols when he writes about Brubeck’s penchant for “polytonality” and “polyrhythms.” A typical example of his exhaustive musing: “Laying arpeggios on thick, Brubeck recapped his theme as Benjamin’s ‘arco’ bass seesawed through the texture, spiraling around the rich chromaticism with an intense throbbing tone that projected like a whole section of cellos.” However fascinating his subject’s artistry may be, delving so deeply into the DNA of Brubeck’s decadeslong musical catalog does have the potential to alienate more casual music fans. Thankfully, Clark also hits all the right biographical notes along the way, including Brubeck’s time in the Army; his early days studying at Mills College in Oakland under the tutelage of Darius Milhaud; his efforts to steer clear of mobster Morris Levy, who was heavily involved in the 1950s jazz scene; his defiance of Jim Crow segregation in the South; and his deft leading of his Dave Brubeck Quartet to superstardom. The mix of musicology and biography allows Clark to paint an imitate portrait of Brubeck as a man of great personal and artistic integrity, and that may not have been possible if the author had simply stuck to a traditional score.
A nontraditional biography that sings despite its studious blocks of theory-heavy dissection.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-306-92164-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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