Sad news today for jazz fans and music lovers everywhere with the death of legendary jazz pianist and restless innovator Dave Brubeck at the age of 91. Brubeck’s career spanned over 60 years — he formed his eponymous quartet in 1951, and became a genuine crossover star with the release of Time Out in 1959. The album crossed over to the mainstream Billboard pop charts, peaking at #2, and was the first jazz record to sell a million copies — not bad for a record devoted to exploring weird time signatures and scales influenced by a trip Brubeck took to Eastern Europe and Asia. He disbanded the quartet in 1967 and focused on longer, more complex orchestral works, works that came to reflect his growing interest in spirituality. His legacy lives on in both the influence his 1950s and 1960s output had on the development of jazz, and more fundamentally in the lesson that the public may well appreciate even the most complex and challenging works… if only you give them the chance.