The Dave Brubeck Quartet was nothing if not hardworking. Here they are at the outset of a State Department tour in 1958 that would take in Poland, Turkey, India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), East Pakistan (Bangladesh), West Pakistan (Pakistan), Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. This album, with excellent sound captured by the engineers of the NDR (North German Radio) in a recording remote, captures the ‘classic’ Brubeck quartet – with Desmond, Wright and Morello (below) – in transition. The key personnel were in place but the group was yet to be defined by Brubeck’s own compositions – this concert, for example, only included three Brubeck originals, something that would change a year later after the huge success of Time Out. The overall balance of their repertoire at the time was weighted towards standards – here ‘Gone With the Wind’ – the title track of an upcoming album Brubeck would record two months later –‘For All We Know’, ‘Take the A Train’, ‘Out of Nowhere’, ‘I’m in a Dancing Mood’, ‘These Foolish Things’ and ‘St. Louis Blues’ get an airing. The joy of hearing these standards again is in the consummate improvisations of Paul Desmond, seemingly never at a loss for ideas, and how he is able to create magic with material that even then was pretty well worn. While on the 1958 State Department tour, of which this concert was a part, Brubeck would be exposed to sounds and rhythms that would inspire his album Jazz Impressions of Eurasia. The originals he came up with would give his record company the confidence to back the recording of more original material which would come to define the band with its subtle revolution of polytonal and polyrhythmical approaches. Meanwhile, we hear the band working discretely towards these aims on pieces such as ‘Two Part Contention’ and ‘St. Louis Blues’.