One of the many highlights of Brubeck Festival 2005 is a re-creation of the 1940's Dave Brubeck Octet. The 2005 version is comprised of the six current Brubeck Fellows plus two outstanding Pacific Conservatory students and features special guest clarinet virtuoso Bill Smith, one of the Octet's founding members who, along with Dave, is on the original 1946 recording! As the original group grew out of a series of orchestration assignments given by Dave's Mills College composition teacher, French composer Darius Milhaud, how apropos that the New Brubeck Octet is performing at the Mills College Concert Hall with Dave in the audience as composer-in-residence! The ensemble not only features original arrangements exactly as penned by Dave and other members of the original Octet some 60 years ago, but also new arrangements of Dave's music specifically written for this new group by Brubeck scholar and Brubeck Institute faculty member Joe Gilman. The Mills evening also features a wonderful new string quartet, Quartet San Francisco, which is in residence at Mills this year. They're playing a combination of original compositions, Dave's classical string quartet music, plus new arrangements of Brubeck jazz tunes written by the group's leader, Jeremy Cohen.
Cost: $12 general/$6 students and seniors