Dave Brubeck’s Surprise Duet: A Magical Moment at the Moscow Conservatory (1997)

Sor­ry to bring you the sad news.  This morn­ing, the great jazz musi­cian Dave Brubeck died in Con­necti­cut, just a day short of his 92nd birth­day. He’s, of course, best remem­bered for his jazz stan­dard “Take Five,” record­ed and per­formed first in 1959. Below, you can watch a vin­tage per­for­mance from the Jazz Casu­al TV show in 1961.

Above, we’re bring­ing you a reprise of our favorite moment with Brubeck. The footage you’re watch­ing was record­ed in Decem­ber 1997, when the pianist paid a vis­it to the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry. Dur­ing his con­cert, an audi­ence mem­ber asked him to impro­vise on the old Russ­ian sea shan­ty “Ej, Uhnem.” About two min­utes into the impro­vi­sa­tion, a young vio­lin­ist rose from his seat and start­ed to play along. You just have to love Dav­e’s sur­prised look at 2:09. The young man turned out to be a stu­dent at the con­ser­va­to­ry. His name is Denis Kolobov and he is now a vio­lin­ist of inter­na­tion­al renown. We will sore­ly miss you Dave.…

Mate­r­i­al for this post was con­tributed by @MatthiasRascher