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PRIMARY WAVE MUSIC PARTNERS WITH THE DAVE BRUBECK FAMILY
TERMS OF THE DEAL WILL SEE THE PUBLISHER PARTNER ON THE LEGENDARY JAZZ PIANIST AND COMPOSER’S CATALOGS OF MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS AND RECORDINGS, AS WELL AS NAME AND LIKENESS LICENSING RIGHTS
“… there’s something especially startling about hearing what went into the making of ‘Time Out,’ the
Dave Brubeck Quartet’s masterpiece, and maybe the ultimate example of a live art form being carved down and mapped out into an impeccably finished product.”
-New York Times
“Brubeck was so original that he really belongs to no single era.
And as such, his music fits comfortably within all eras.”
-JazzTimes
“You can’t understand America without understanding Jazz, and you can’t understand Jazz without understanding
Dave Brubeck.”
-Barack Obama
NEW YORK, NY (November 18, 2025) – Primary Wave Music, the leading independent publisher of iconic and legendary music in the world, has announced today its partnership with Derry Music Company, which includes the legendary jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck’s incredible catalog of music, publishing copyrights and recordings. In this new partnership, Primary Wave will now also share in the licensing of Brubeck’s name, image and likeness rights and will provide access to the company’s marketing team and publishing infrastructure, working closely on new marketing, branding, digital, and synch opportunities, as well as film & television projects.
Referred to as a “living legend” by the Library of Congress, Dave Brubeck composed and recorded some of the most iconic and lauded music over the course of his incomparable 6+ decade career including “In Your Own Sweet Way,” “It’s a Raggy Waltz,” and more, including the Grammy nominated “Unsquare Dance,” “Autumn,” and “Blue Rondo A La Turk,” and the Paul Desmond-composed “Take Five.” Recorded by the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1959, “Take Five” was released in September of that year as a promotional single from the Quartet’s Time Out album. Two years later in 1961, “Take Five” started to gain a significant fanbase and rose to popularity, so much so it would ultimately become the best-selling jazz single of all time. The success of “Take Five” was instrumental in making Time Out the first jazz album to sell one million copies. The album, which the New York Times called a “masterpiece”, reached number two on the Billboard Top 200, has sold more than two million copies and, in 2009, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It is often referred to as the best-known Jazz tune worldwide.
Brubeck would release music until his death in 2012 at the age of 92. Although he shied away from the spotlight, it did not stop the world from showering him with awards, acclaim and praise. He was the recipient of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors, a National Medal of Arts, BBC Jazz Lifetime Achievement Award, the Library of Congress Living Legend Award, is in the Downbeat Hall of Fame, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and won the Downbeat Readers Poll for best group in 1964 and remarkably again in 2010. Brubeck has been nominated for an astounding eight Grammy Awards and was the second jazz artist to be featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1954. Many words come to mind when one thinks of Dave Brubeck – pioneer, gifted, trailblazer, daring and adventurous, but despite all the accolades he received, his sole focus was creating exceptional music.
Brubeck’s recordings have been used in numerous movies and television programs including “Baby Driver,” “Wedding Crashers,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Sing,” “The Simpsons,” “Breaking Bad,” “The Sopranos,” and Seth Rogan’s “The Studio” among others. Dave was also featured in the Ken Burns television series, “Jazz”. Ken said that Dave’s emotional interview on the film was the heart and soul of the series. Dave was also the subject of other documentary films, (broadcast widely on BBC and the A&E Network) including Hedrick Smith’s “Rediscovering Dave Brubeck” and Clint Eastwood’s “In His Own Sweet Way.”
“The Brubeck family enjoys a rare position in the musical world as we have inherited an exceptional legacy. Our father, Dave Brubeck, was a world figure known for his talent, originality, international diplomacy, and decency. We have trained, performed and recorded with our remarkable father for over a half century and are committed to promoting his creativity in both jazz and classical music” said the family in a statement about their partnership with Primary Wave.
They continue, “We are thrilled about our new partnership with Primary Wave, whose innovative and brilliant team will enable us to further extend the appreciation of our parents’ musical and humanitarian heritage.”
Primary Wave’s John Luneau added “I’ve worked on dozens of acquisitions for Primary Wave in the 15 years I’ve been with the team, but this one is personal. Dave Brubeck and his classic Quartet were my first musical idols – 3 years before the Beatles! – and remain so still. It’s the honor of my career to help bring about this brilliant marriage of Dave’s musical genius with Primary Wave’s skill at preserving and expanding the legacies of iconic artists.”
David Weitzman joined in, “Dave Brubeck wasn’t just ahead of his time, he was outside of it. He played in time signatures none dared to touch, he built bands that broke racial barriers before the world caught up and named his masterpieces Time Out and Time Further Out – fitting titles for a man who seemed to live one beat ahead of the rest of us.”
About Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck, designated a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, was one of the most active and popular musicians in both the jazz and classical worlds. With a career that spanned over six decades, his experiments in odd time signatures, improvised counterpoint, polyrhythm and polytonality remain hallmarks of his innovative style.
Born into a musical family in Concord, California — his two older brothers were also professional musicians — Dave began piano lessons with his mother at age four. He was 12 when his father moved the family to a cattle ranch in the foothills of the Sierras. Dave’s life changed dramatically. Piano lessons ended and cowboy life began. He worked with his father on the 45,000-acre cattle ranch. When Dave was 14, he started playing in local dance bands on weekends. When he enrolled at the College of the Pacific, in Stockton, California, his intention was to study veterinary medicine and return to the ranch. While working his way through school as a pianist in local nightclubs, the lure of jazz became irresistible, and Dave changed his major to music. Graduating in 1942, he enlisted in the Army, and shortly thereafter married Iola Whitlock, a fellow student at Pacific. While serving in Patton’s Army in Europe, he led the first racially integrated band. After his discharge from military service in 1946, he enrolled at Mills College in Oakland, California to study composition with French composer, Darius Milhaud. Milhaud encouraged him to pursue a career in jazz and to incorporate jazz elements into his compositions. This cross-genre experimentation with like-minded Milhaud students led to the formation of the Dave Brubeck Octet in 1947. In 1949, Brubeck with Cal Tjader and Ron Crotty, fellow Octet members, cut their first award-winning Dave Brubeck Trio recordings. After suffering a near fatal diving accident in 1951, Dave formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, who was also a member of the Octet. The legendary Brubeck-Desmond collaboration lasted seventeen years and beyond.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s recordings and concert appearances on college campuses in the ‘50s and early ‘60s introduced jazz to thousands of young people. Playing concerts on the college circuit was a new performance strategy masterminded by Iola Brubeck, Dave’s manager. The Quartet’s audiences were not limited to students, however. The group played in jazz clubs in every major city and toured in package shows with such artists as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Stan Getz. The Dave Brubeck Quartet repeatedly won top honors in trade magazines and critic’s and reader’s polls. In 1954 Dave Brubeck signed with Columbia Records (now Sony) and released the first of his many renowned Columbia albums, most with the classic Quartet. That same year, his portrait appeared on the cover of Time Magazine with a story about the jazz renaissance and Brubeck’s phenomenal ascendancy.
In 1957 the Quartet released the first in Brubeck’s “Jazz Impressions” series of albums on Columbia inspired by Brubeck’s extensive travels. The first U.S- based “Jazz Impressions” album was “Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A.”, which was later followed by “Jazz Impressions of New York.” In 1958 the Quartet made its first of many international tours. The U.S. State Department sponsored the Quartet’s performances in Poland, India, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. Exposure to many different cultures was reflected in the group’s repertoire and the music on “Jazz Impressions of Eurasia” and “Jazz Impressions of Japan” that incorporated exotic elements,
The Quartet’s groundbreaking 1959 recording on Columbia entitled “Time Out” experimented in time signatures beyond the usual jazz 4/4. To everyone’s surprise “Time Out” became the first jazz album to sell over a million copies and “Blue Rondo a la Turk” and “Take Five” (now in the Grammy Hall of Fame) began to appear on jukeboxes throughout the world. Brubeck followed up with several more groundbreaking albums in the “Time” series, including “Time Further Out”, “Countdown: Time in Outer Space”, and “Time In”, all of which displayed the Quartet’s growing confidence and prowess in composing, performing and improvising in difficult time signatures.
Early in his career Brubeck wrote primarily for this Quartet, and some of those pieces, such as “In Your Own Sweet Way” and “The Duke” were recorded by Miles Davis and have become part of the standard jazz repertoire. His first orchestral composition, “Elementals“, written for an improvising jazz combo and symphony orchestra was premiered and recorded in 1962. Choreographed by Lar Lubovitch, “Elemental Brubeck” is currently in the repertoire of the San Francisco Ballet and several other dance companies.
Throughout his career Brubeck experimented with integrating jazz into classical forms. In 1959 his Quartet premiered and recorded his brother Howard’s “Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra” with the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conducting. In 1960 he composed “Points on Jazz” for the American Ballet Theatre, and in later decades composed for and toured with the Murray Louis Dance Company. His musical theater piece (with book and lyrics by Iola Brubeck,) “The Real Ambassadors” starring Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae was recorded and performed to great acclaim at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival.
The “classic” Dave Brubeck Quartet (Paul Desmond, alto sax from 1951; Eugene Wright, bass from 1958; Joe Morello, drums from 1956) was dissolved in December, 1967. Baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan joined a newly formed Dave Brubeck Trio (with Jack Six, bass; and Alan Dawson, drums) the following year. This group recorded and toured the world together for seven years. In this period Brubeck also performed and recorded with three of his musical sons, Darius, Chris and Dan billed as “Two Generations of Brubeck”, frequently with Gerry Mulligan or Paul Desmond as guest artists.
In the ‘80s Brubeck led a quartet that featured clarinetist Bill Smith, a former Octet member, with Dave’s son Chris on electric fretless bass and Randy Jones on drums. This group toured the Soviet Union in 1987 and along with former bassist, Eugene Wright accompanied President Reagan to Moscow to perform at the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit in 1988. Since the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s first appearance at a State Dinner for King Hussein of Jordan during the Johnson administration, Brubeck performed at The White House on several occasions and for many different Presidents, including performing with Tony Bennett in the Kennedy era.
Shortly after the dissolution of the “classic” Quartet, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with Erich Kunzel conducting, premiered Brubeck’s oratorio,” The Light in the Wilderness” (February 1968). The following year Brubeck’s second major work “The Gates of Justice”, a cantata based on the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Old Testament, was also premiered by Kunzel in Cincinnati. It has since been re-recorded by the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Cantor Abraham Mizrahi, tenor and Kevin Deas, bass-baritone, for the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, Russell Gloyd conducting.
Brubeck continued to experiment with interweaving jazz and classical music. He performed as composer-performer with most of the major orchestras in the United States and with prestigious choral groups and orchestras in Europe. When citing some of the highlights of his career, Dave would always include the premier of his composition “Upon This Rock” commissioned for Pope John Paul II’s celebration at Candlestick Park in San Francisco and the performances of his mass “To Hope! A Celebration” in St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna and in Moscow with the Russian National Orchestra and Orloff choir.
Dave Brubeck’s compositions include a popular Christmas choral pageant “La Fiesta de la Posada”, oratorios and cantatas, ballet suites, a string quartet, chamber ensembles, pieces for solo and duo-piano, violin solos and orchestral works. His mass “To Hope! A Celebration” has been performed throughout the English-speaking world, and was recorded in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. In 2002 the London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices recorded his Easter oratorio “Beloved Son”, “Pange Lingua Variations”, “The Voice of the Holy Spirit” and a composition for string orchestra, “Regret” on “Classical Brubeck”, all under the baton of Russell Gloyd, who was Brubeck’s conductor, producer and manager for 34 years. In 2006, the Monterey Jazz Festival commissioned and presented Dave’s mini opera based on Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row“.
While increasingly active as a composer, Brubeck remained a leading figure in jazz, recording for Telarc, appearing in festivals and touring internationally in concert halls with the most recent version of the Dave Brubeck Quartet– Bobby Militello, sax and flute; Randy Jones, drums; and Michael Moore, bass. As in former Dave Brubeck Quartets, each was a master musician and their concert repertoire ranged from “hits” from the old Quartet “book” to cutting edge new material.
Dave Brubeck received many national and international honors, including the National Medal of the Arts from President Clinton, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian Medal, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was awarded numerous honorary doctorates from American, Canadian, English and German universities, including an honorary degree in Sacred Theology from Fribourg University, Switzerland. Brubeck received the Distinguished Arts Award from the Ford Honors program of the University of Michigan and in 2006 received from Notre Dame their highest honor, the Laetare Medal. He was a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale University, and was presented with the Sanford Medal by the Yale School of Music
In the year 2000 the National Endowment for the Arts declared Dave Brubeck a Jazz Master. He was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2007 Dave received a Living Legacy Jazz Award from Kennedy Center and the Arison Award from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts.
His international honors include Austria’s highest award for the Arts, a citation from the French government, and the Bocconi Medal from Italy. The London Symphony Orchestra, acknowledging their long association, presented Dave with their prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.
In 2009, Dave (along with Bruce Springsteen, Robert De Nero, Mel Brooks and Grace Bumbry) was honored to receive the prestigious Kennedy Center Award, which President Barack Obama bestowed on him on his 89th birthday.
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