LIJF 2025: Darius Brubeck Quartet
Thursday, 20 February 2025 Time: 7.30pm
Darius Brubeck - piano
Matt Ridley - bass
Wesley Gibbens - drums
Dave O'Higgins - sax
The son of legendary Jazz musician and composer Dave Brubeck, Darius Brubeck has enjoyed great success as a pianist, composer and innovative educator in his own right.
In the 70s and early 80s, Darius led his own groups, played with Don McLean, Larry Coryell, and was ushered into the international jazz scene as a member of Two Generations of Brubeck and The New Brubeck Quartet (Dave, Darius, Chris, and Dan Brubeck) under his father’s leadership.
Moving to South Africa in 1983, he initiated the first degree course in Jazz Studies offered by an African university and founded the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where, as Professor of Jazz Studies, he taught until 2005. He has also served as a Fulbright visiting professor in Romania and Turkey.
Darius Brubeck and the Afro Cool Concept, which featured some of South Africa’s premier musicians, played throughout southern Africa, Europe, and the USA. He also led groups representing his university and South Africa in Europe, Turkey, Peru, Thailand, and the USA. Using the band name Gathering Forces for ‘world-music’ concerts, he collaborated with virtuoso bansuri player Deepak Ram.
Darius Brubeck now leads the London-based Darius Brubeck Quartet, which has been together for 15 years and tours internationally. The group features saxophonist Dave O’Higgins, who has been described by The Jazz Guide as “A stunning player in the neo-bop vein, with an apparently effortless flow of coherent ideas, beautiful time and a highly developed harmonic sense”, bassist Matt Ridley, a graduate of Trinity College of Music London and a well-known sideman and band leader on the UK Jazz scene, and South African drummer, educator and composer Wesley Gibbens.