JAZZ SPOTLIGHT

DAVE BRUBECK

“Just You, Just Me”

Telarc

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Dave Brubeck was the darling of the college set in the ‘50s. But in more recent times he’s been looked on as something of a museum piece by those who had heard him do Paul Desmond’s “Take Five” one too many times. Now the pianist-composer, a pioneer in the use of unusual time signatures and ambitious harmonies, is ready to assume the mantle of elder statesman with this wonderful solo recording.

Filled with theme and variation, the disc plays to Brubeck’s strengths--a talented left hand, a beautifully realized lyrical sense and the ability to go two directions at once--in a program that ranges from light, smiling ditties to deeply blue, melancholic confessions.

Though the rhythms infrequently border on the stodgy as Brubeck’s left-hand stride begins to lumber, the majority of this music dances with incredible lightness and two-handed invention. Typical are his set of variations on “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?”--an unbroken stream of ideas that ranges from skirt-swirling swing to stately processional. The familiar theme serves only as a touchstone as Brubeck plays to the pathos in the Depression-era lyric.

The pianist gets an amazingly surreal effect with a series of ascending chords on the title tune, and his composition “Strange Meadowlark” develops wittily from the bird’s own song. His darkest statement, the Latin-tinged “Lullaby,” is his most moving.

Brubeck’s own notes to the album are filled with words like contrapuntal and polytonal , but the operational term is here is beautiful . And not once does the maestro hint at “Take Five.”

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