Concert review in UK Jazz News
Sebastian Scotney reviews the Darius Brubeck Quartet’s concert at Union Chapel, in UK Jazz News on 17th December 2025.
The concert was a tribute to Dave Brubeck’s ‘Time Out’ and ‘time signature’ jazz as well as a celebration of the quartet’s 20 years together.
The author writes:
One very happy image stays in mind from Monday night’s completely packed Brubeck concert at Union Chapel, because it captures the mood of celebration so well: at the end of ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk’, I noticed bassist Matt Ridley smiling as he twirled his double bass on its own axis like a spinning top.
The members of the Darius Brubeck Quartet have reason indeed for celebration. The four were marking two decades in existence with the current line-up, although as Darius Brubeck himself noted, the actual anniversary will fall in early 2026 and the birthday junketing is merely getting off to an early start. The group recently played a set of dates in Palermo, and that showed: the ease of communication and flow of a quartet thoroughly played in helped create a concert which didn’t just draw the audience in straight away, it also elicited a response which continued to grow warmer as the evening developed.
There were many highlights in Mondays concert: a gloriously spacious solo piano introduction to “Strange Meadowlark”, some wonderful intensity builds in Dave O’Higgins’s soloing, especially on “Blue Rondo a la Turk”, and Matt Ridley’s strongly characterful solo bass introduction to “Brexit Blues”.
There is an inevitable dramaturgy to their set these days. By half time, memories of Darius’s father’s classic, indelible album “Time Out” start to emerge, and legacy and heritage dictate where such an evening should end: with Darius first going through the delicate motions of clearing his conscience by asking a member of the audience to actually “request” “Take Five”, and then by playing it, building up to the point where a rip-roaring, rim-shotting energetic and extrovert drum solo from Wesley Gibbens ensues. Gibbens apparently has the unique distinction among the four of never having missed a quartet gig…. And from that point, there’s only one place to go – a unanimous standing ovation from the full house.
And yet it needs saying: there is so much more to Darius Brubeck than the memories his father and of Paul Desmond’s “Take Five”. At UKJN we marked his 75th birthday – and his recovery from having been very seriously, frighteningly ill from Covid – back in 2022, and the birthday wishes we gathered from friends and colleagues show what a benign and broad influence he has had on the music.
Among the outpourings of affection in that piece, the first one – by a fluke of the alphabet – stands out. Chris Ballantine of the University of KwaZulu-Natal remembered that Darius “established the first degree-programme in jazz on the African continent, put jazz pedagogy on an entirely new footing, changed countless lives for the better, and helped launch the careers of many of the South African jazz performers now globally esteemed.”
Darius dedicated the concert and the second set in particular to the much-missed Martin Hummel, whose naming of his label as “Ubuntu” drew its main inspiration from Darius Brubeck. All the happiness of a twirling bass and a standing ovation serve as a reminder that life can and does also bring darker moments. A perspective which in itself gives a good reason to be celebrating the good times.
Read the article for more photos and a list of the pieces played.