Darius Brubeck is an American jazz pianist, bandleader, composer, broadcaster, educator, and former director of the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He is the son of legendary jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck. Catherine Brubeck, a South African, has worked in events organization, publishing, and artist management (specializing in jazz) in America, South Africa, and the UK. She was the Project Manager at the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music, initiating and organizing extra-curricular projects and events throughout Darius’s term as director.
“Darius and Cathy Brubeck take turns narrating this engrossing memoir of their experiences teaching and presenting music in South Africa from the 1980s into the 2000s. Their humility makes it appealing--they are intent on telling it like it was, not in making everything sound rosy. What makes the book particularly informative for all readers, musicians and otherwise, is the level of detail that they provide about life and politics in South Africa during these years, both in and out of academia.”--Lewis Porter, author of Playback with Lewis Porter! “Playing the Changes is entertaining and profound in equal measure. It tells the story of a remarkable passage in the history of music and the performing arts in higher education, especially at UKZN but in South Africa more widely. Darius and Cathy Brubeck were central to the miraculous chemistry that made it all happen.”--David Attwell, author of J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing