Dave Brubeck on The 32nd Annual Kennedy Center Honors Ceremony

Dave Brubeck on The 32nd Annual Kennedy Center Honors Ceremony on Hot Topics -- Tuesday Night, December 29 2009 The 32nd Annual Kennedy Center Honors Ceremony will on air on CBS. The ceremony was held in Washington, D.C. on December 6. President Barack Obama and the First Lady were in attendance for the first time at this event. Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi also attended. This year's honorees were singer Bruce Springstreen, producer Mel Brooks, jazz great Dave Brubeck, opera singer Grace Bumbry and actor Robert DeNiro.


Mr. Brubeck has had such an amazing impact in the world of music. He states, "I am primarily a jazz composer. Most of us don’t even like the word jazz—Ellington didn’t like it, Stan Kenton didn’t like it. It’s really an extension of what Bach and Mozart did every day: improvise. Bach improvised every Sunday. Classical music shouldn’t abandon it. The composers most likely to live on from the 20th century are Ives, Copland, Bernstein, Ellington, Gershwin and all the people wise enough to use jazz, like they were."

He began playing piano by the age of 4 and by the age of 14 he was playing regular gigs. His career spanned the entire world from there. The Library of Congress has designated him a "Living Legend".

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