Brubeck's back, without Charlie Parker.

Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard

At 4 a.m. on July 29, a jet- lagged Dave Brubeck, just in from Stockholm, had finished a little piece of music that he had had in mind to write since the Battle of the Bulge.

Yes, one of the turning points of World War II.

Now, he was sitting in his hotel room in Los Gatos, Calif., proofreading the score of "The Ten Commandments" before lunching with "a rabbi friend of mine" to talk about the text.

"I want this piece to be used by Muslims," Brubeck says on the phone, "because their tradition goes back to the Ten Commandments, but also by Protestants, Catholics and Jews.

`People are going to want all kinds of changes in the words, and that's going to get me upset, because I've finished the music, and word changes might affect the rhythmic patterns."

In that sentence, Brubeck the jazzman bumps into Brubeck the composer of sacred music. Rhythmic patterns have been important to Brubeck ever since his quartet's celebrated 1959 album, "Time Out," liberated jazz from the standard 4/4 time signature. But Brubeck, 83, also has written 10 oratorios, a Mass and many other pieces of sacred music.

Brubeck's mother was a Presbyterian church choir director, but he says that "whatever they do to make you officially a Presbyterian was never done to me." Later, after writing his Mass, he decided to become a Catholic.

"People always write that I converted," he says, but that's not accurate. "I joined."

His Mass recently was performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Performances are set for this fall in Salzburg and Vienna, Austria.

Many people who know him only through such compositions and are surprised to learn that he's a jazz musician, Brubeck says. And many jazz fans are unaware of his religious music.

That's too bad, he says, because his religious works "have such great messages."

The message he emphasizes in "The Ten Commandments" is directly related to his World War II experience playing in a band attached to Gen. George Patton's troops.

"When everybody's killing each other, that can motivate you," he says. "It says, `And thou shalt not kill.' '

That's the usual English translation, but Jewish scholars say the Hebrew verb means murder, not kill, which makes the discussion more complicated. That's what he's going to talk over with the rabbi.

Brubeck's two worlds also will come together on Wednes- day, when the 50th Newport Jazz Festival will open with his 1969 cantata "Gates of Justice." It is based on biblical and Hebrew liturgical texts, with quotations from Martin Luther King's speeches, Negro spirituals and the teachings of the Jewish sage Hillel.

A choir, a baritone soloist and a cantor will sing the words. Brubeck will play the music himself, accompanied by drummer Randy Jones and bassist Michael Moore.

The poll sitter

First, however, Brubeck, Jones, Moore and alto saxman Bobby Militello will play here in Eugene at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, in a Hult Center concert that's part of the annual Oregon Festival of American Music.

Brubeck has played with Militello and Jones for more than 25 years, and with Moore for two years. Moore succeeded bassist Jack Six, who retired after 30 years with Brubeck.

This summer's festival is celebrating "The Fabulous Fifties," a decade that was indeed fabulous for Brubeck.

"There was a lot going on for me in the early '50s," Brubeck says. "We were leading all the polls: Downbeat, Metronome, Playboy and on and on."

His quartet's 1953 "Jazz Goes to College" album was so successful that Brubeck ended up on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, which he says was "the biggest thing that could happen for you at that time."

Building audiences by performing on college campuses was the idea of Brubeck's wife and lyricist, Iola. One of the first campuses Brubeck visited was the University of Oregon.

He remembers playing here in 1949 or '50 with vibraphonist Cal Tjader, then a drummer, and bassist Ron Crotty. This was the trio's first gig outside the San Francisco Bay area.

In the early '50s he played here again, this time with Crotty, saxophonist Paul Desmond and drummer Lloyd Davis. The concert that also included saxman Charlie Parker, trumpet player Chet Baker and drummer Shelly Manne.

In 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet (Brubeck, Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello) recorded "Time Out," an all-original album with unorthodox time signatures. The Columbia Records marketing department was certain it would be a flop.

Featuring such tracks as Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk" and Desmond's "Take Five," the album sold a million copies, phenomenal for a jazz record. Brubeck says "Take Five" is the most-performed jazz piece ever written, and sales of the "Time Out" album are still strong.

"It just never stopped,"

The quartet went on to record four other "Time" albums, and Columbia has reissued them in a box set called "Time Signatures."

Calling `Time Out'

The heavy performance schedule that followed the release of "Time Out" kept Brubeck from working on orchestral compositions, and he disbanded the quartet in 1967 in hopes of finding more time for that. But in 1968, to help out a promoter who had helped him earlier in his career, Brubeck put together another quartet, this time with baritone saxman Gerry Mulligan.

Officially, that group lasted for about six years, Brubeck says. But in subsequent years, he often played with Mulligan and with Desmond, too, until Desmond died of cancer in 1977.

Brubeck says his son Darius, a pianist, has written his thesis on the Dave Brubeck Quartet and the effect that the "Time Out" album had on jazz. He hasn't yet read it.

In fact, all four of his sons - the others are Chris, Danny and Matthew - are musicians; Chris is following in his father's footsteps as a composer. Brubeck's daughter, Cathy, 46, has a strong interest in flute, dance and painting, but has put music on the back burner while raising a family. Brubeck's brothers, Henry and Howard, also had music careers.

His father was a cattle rancher in Stockton, Calif., and his mother was a musician and music teacher. She taught him to play piano and to listen for rhythms, natural and man-made, in the world around him.

Brubeck's ear was so good that he got in and out of Stockton's College of the Pacific without learning to read music. After the war, he studied Oakland's Mills College for two years on the G.I. Bill, and later privately with his Mills teacher, composer Darius Milhaud.

Eventually, he learned to read music. Although Brubeck never graduated from Mills College, he now has nine honorary degrees from universities in the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.

His recent honors include a Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, a National Medal of the Arts and a Grammy lifetime achievement award. The International Association of Jazz Educators has inducted him into the Jazz Hall of Fame.

Brubeck himself is involved in education, through the Bru- beck Institute for contemporary music at his alma mater, now the University of the Pacific.

During summer sessions at the institute, he's seen some impressive young talent in recent years, including teenage Russian pianist Aldar Danilov.

"He's frightening," Brubeck says, "just great. Technically, he's unbelievable."

Paul Denison can be reached at 338-2323 or pdenison@ guardnet.com.

CONCERT PREVIEW

Dave Brubeck Quartet

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Silva Concert Hall, Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street

How much: $24 to $42 through Hult outlets or the Shedd, 687-6526