‘Post-PC’ is more than just marketing buzz for Apple CEO Tim Cook

Apple (AAPL) is no stranger to ditching technologies when it deems them to no longer be useful. The company dropped the floppy disk for a CD-ROM drive on the first iMac and most recently has shifted to building MacBooks and iMacs without any physical disc drives. In his first televised interview on NBC’s Rockcenter with Brian Williams, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that he has “ditched physical keyboards” now that he spends 80% of his time using his iPad “authoring email” and “working on things.” Cook says he’s gotten quite good at typing on the screen and advises people to trust auto-correction as it’s “quite good” — though it’s a feature we still blast iOS for some five years after the first iPhone launched. But what does it mean when the boss of the country’s most valuable company and the most revered technology company in the world doesn’t even use physical keyboards anymore? Perhaps the “post-PC” era will become mainstream sooner than we thought.

For years, Apple has touted the idea that we’re entering the “post-PC” era – a period when touchscreen-equipped smartphones and tablets will eclipse desktops, notebooks and complex operating systems as they slowly fade away into a niche reserved for professionals.

While there will still be a need for notebooks, Windows PCs and Macs, the increasing numbers of smartphones and tablets sold and continued decline of worldwide PC sales support Apple’s claim that mobile is where the next tech battleground is, even if Microsoft (MSFT) thinks otherwise.

The term “dogfooding” is often thrown around between tech blogs and Cook is doing exactly that — using his “own product to demonstrate the quality and capabilities of the product.”

As Steve Jobs once said, Apple only builds products its own engineers and designers would use themselves.

Cook’s not saying, “iPads are great” for some people and some tasks. The fact that Cook uses his iPad for 80% of his work and an iPhone all the time suggests he and Apple are serious about this post-PC era. Apple wants iPads and iPhones to be great for all of your computing needs.

Apple is serious enough about it that the big boss has shifted his habits from old-school typing on actual keyboards to using virtual keyboards. And for all we know, Cook could be using even more natural human interfaces such as more voice recognition (ex: Siri in iOS and built-in dictation in OS X Mountain Lion).

Will physical keyboards go the way of the dodo in the next handful of years? It’s doubtful, but don’t be surprised if you see fewer and fewer offices with QWERTY keyboards attached to PCs and more desks and execs just carrying tablets and a smartphone on the side.

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UK’s Kate and William “saddened” by nurse’s death

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Prince William and his wife Kate said on Friday they were “deeply saddened” by the death of a nurse who fell victim to a prank call from an Australian radio station seeking details of the duchess’s condition while she was in hospital for morning sickness.

The King Edward VII hospital earlier confirmed the death of the nurse, Jacinda Saldanha.

“Their Royal Highnesses were looked after so wonderfully well at all times by everybody at King Edward VII Hospital, and their thoughts and prayers are with Jacintha Saldanha‘s family, friends and colleagues at this very sad time,” said a statement from William’s office.

(Reporting by Tim Castle; editing by Stephen Addison)

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GlaxoSmithKline in deal with MD Anderson on cancer drugs

(Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline signed a collaboration agreement with the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to develop new drugs that promote a patient’s immune system to attack cancer based on discoveries by Anderson researchers.

Anderson, one of the world’s premier cancer research and treatment centers, announced the agreement on Friday. Under terms of the deal, it will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and research funding from Glaxo and could earn $ 335 million plus royalties if the collaboration leads to approved medicines.

The British drugmaker will get exclusive worldwide rights to develop and sell antibodies that activate OX40, a protein on the surface of T cells – a type of white blood cell that is an important component of the body’s immune system. The antibodies were discovered by Dr. Yong-Jun Liu and colleagues when he was professor and chair of MD Anderson’s Department of Immunology.

“This agreement is … a testament to the vision shared by GSK and MD Anderson that successful clinical development of oncology drugs requires seamless integration of drug development expertise and deep biological knowledge,” Dr Giulio Draetta, director of Anderson’s Institute for Applied Cancer Science, said in a statement.

So-called immunotherapies, which help the body’s immune system to more efficiently attack cancer, are seen as an important new frontier is the fight against the disease in its many forms. Several companies are developing promising cancer immunotherapies.

Any drugs that come out of the Glaxo-Anderson collaboration would be several years away as more preclinical testing is needed before the OX40 approach will be tested in human subjects, MD Anderson said.

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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US jobless rate at four-year low

7 December 2012 Last updated at 11:29 ET

The US added 146,000 jobs in November, official data shows, as the economy seemingly shrugged off storm Sandy.

The unexpectedly strong performance brought the unemployment rate down to a four-year low of 7.7% of the workforce.

The jobs figure was well above most analysts’ expectations and continued a recent surge that began in July.

Weekly benefits data registered a sharp but short-lived jump in the number claiming unemployment benefits in the states ravaged by the storm last month.

“Our analysis leads us to conclude that Hurricane Sandy did not substantively impact the national employment and unemployment estimates for November,” said John Galvin, acting commissioner at the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), which produced the jobs report.

The jobs survey data for the individual states – which can be used by analysts to determine what effect, if any, the storm had – will not be released until 21 December.

Wobbly confidence

Stock markets gave the figures a cautiously positive response, with both the Dow Jones and S&P 500 indexes rising 0.3% at the start of trading on Wall Street.

European shares, which had been down for the day following a cut in the Bundesbank’s growth forecast for Germany, jumped about 0.5% on the news.

The US Federal Reserve is due to meet next week to decide whether to expand the central bank’s policy of buying up debt from the markets in order to stimulate the recovery.

Continue reading the main story

US government bonds fell slightly in value following the data release, suggesting that markets have lowered the expectations for further intervention by the Fed in light of the strong jobs growth figure.

However, the Fed’s Open Market Committee will also have to weigh the latest consumer confidence survey, also released on Friday, which saw a sharp fall in sentiment in early December.

The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index fell to 74.5 from 82.7 the previous month, reaching a level normally associated with recession, although it was still well above the 55 registered at the depth of the 2008 downturn.

The drop in confidence among ordinary Americans may reflect the impasse in Congress in negotiations to avert the “fiscal cliff” of automatic spending cuts and tax rises that kicks in on 1 January.

Consumer sentiment briefly plummeted in 2011 when the US lost its top triple-A after a similar stand-off over the raising of the legal cap on the US federal government’s ability to borrow.

Mixed message

Although the latest jobs report beat expectations, this was in large part because expectations remain very low.

The number of jobs being added by the US economy since the recession ended has been far weaker than during previous economic recoveries, and has scarcely been enough to keep up with the natural growth in the US population.

The total number of people in employment has been stuck at about 58% of the US population since 2009, well down from the 63% level that characterised the boom years of the past decade, as many Americans have retired or given up seeking work.

Moreover, the relatively good news for November was offset by the BLS’s decision to downwardly revise the jobs figures for the preceding two months by a cumulative total of 49,000.

The October figure – which was originally reported just before the elections as 171,000, prompting some Republican supporters to suggest that the numbers had been manipulated – has been cut in the latest estimate to 138,000.

However, the reduction in the October figure was actually entirely due to public sector jobs cuts – mainly at the state and local government level – being 35,000 higher than originally estimated.

“While more work remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the US economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression,” said Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors.

Dropping out

The unemployment rate – which fell to 7.7% in November, down from 7.9% in October – has fallen in fits and starts over the past three years, since peaking at 10% in late 2008, but still remains some way short of the 5% level that has accompanied periods of healthy growth in the past two decades.

The total number of unemployed people remained largely unchanged in the latest month at about 12 million, as did the number of people out of work for over half a year, at 4.8 million. The number of people taking part-time jobs because they cannot find full-time work also remained unchanged at 8.2 million.

Statistics suggest that much of the decline in the unemployment rate since 2008 has been due to people dropping out of the workforce, either due to retirement or because they have given up seeking work.

The unemployment figure only includes those actively seeking a job, and once people stop doing so they drop out of the statistics.

The retail sector continued to lead the way in job creation, with professional services and IT also providing large contributions, while the construction sector, food manufacturing and chemicals saw sizeable job losses.

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Toronto mayor to stay in power pending appeal of ouster

TORONTO (Reuters) – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford can stay in power pending an appeal of a conflict of interest ruling that ordered him out of his job as leader of Canada’s biggest city, a court ruled on Wednesday.

Madam Justice Gladys Pardu of the Ontario Divisional Court suspended a previous court ruling that said Ford should be ousted. Ford’s appeal of that ruling is set to be heard on January 7, but a decision on the appeal could take months.

Justice Pardu stressed that if she had not suspended the ruling, Ford would have been out of office by next week. “Significant uncertainty would result and needless expenses may be incurred if a by-election is called,” she said.

If Ford wins his appeal, he will get to keep his job until his term ends at the end of 2014. If he loses, the city council will either appoint a successor or call a special election, in which Ford is likely to run again.

“I can’t wait for the appeal, and I’m going to carry on doing what the people elected me to do,” Ford told reporters at City Hall following the decision.

Ford, a larger-than-life character who took power on a promise to “stop the gravy train” at City Hall, has argued that he did nothing wrong when he voted to overturn an order that he repay money that lobbyists had given to a charity he runs.

Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland disagreed, ruling last week that Ford acted with “willful blindness” in the case, and must leave office by December 10.

Ford was elected mayor in a landslide in 2010, but slashing costs without cutting services proved harder than he expected, and his popularity has fallen steeply.

He grabbed unwelcome headlines for reading while driving on a city expressway, for calling the police when a comedian tried to film part of a popular TV show outside his home, and after reports that city resources were used to help administer the high-school football team he coaches.

The conflict-of-interest drama began in 2010 when Ford, then a city councillor, used government letterhead to solicit donations for the football charity created in his name for underprivileged children.

Toronto’s integrity commissioner ordered Ford to repay the C$ 3,150 ($ 3,173) the charity received from lobbyists and companies that do business with the city.

Ford refused to repay the money, and in February 2012 he took part in a city council debate on the matter and then voted to remove the sanctions against him – despite being warned by the council speaker that voting would break the rules.

He pleaded not guilty in September, stating that he believed there was no conflict of interest as there was no financial benefit for the city. The judge dismissed that argument.

In a rare apology after last week’s court ruling, he said the matter began “because I love to help kids play football”.

Ford faces separate charges in a C$ 6 million libel case about remarks he made about corruption at City Hall, and is being audited for his campaign finances. The penalty in the audit case could also include removal from office.

(Reporting by Claire Sibonney; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Russ Blinch, Nick Zieminski; and Peter Galloway)

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mtvU honors Frank Ocean, wounded Pakistani teen

NEW YORK (AP) — The mtvU network is honoring a rap superstar who detailed his love for another man and a Pakistani girl shot for her education advocacy as its Man and Woman of the Year.

Frank Ocean, who earned six Grammy nominations Wednesday, published a letter online about his first love, a man, just as his “channel ORANGE” disc was being released. MtvU on Thursday called it “an incredibly brave move for an artist on the verge of superstardom.”

Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousufzai (mah-LAH’-lah YOO’-suf-ZAY’) blogged about her support of education for girls in Pakistan. For that, Taliban militants stormed her school bus and shot her in the head and neck, but she survived.

The mtvU network is geared toward college students and is seen on more than 750 campuses.

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Vitamin D, calcium disappoint in dementia study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Vitamin D and calcium supplements taken together in low doses offered no protection against dementia in a large U.S. study of older women, but scientists are still holding out hope for vitamin D alone.

Past research has suggested that vitamin D might protect against memory loss and overall functional decline in the aging brain. But more than 2,000 women in the new study who took 400 international units of vitamin D and 1,000 mg of calcium daily for an average of eight years developed cognitive impairments at the same rates as a comparison group on placebo pills.

During the many years that study was ongoing, however, experts gained a better understanding of how calcium and vitamin D might have conflicting effects, so the combination of the two might explain the disappointing results, the study’s authors say.

“I think the definitive study will just look at the effects of vitamin D,” said lead author Dr. Rebecca Rossom, from HealthPartners Institute for Education and Research, a nonprofit arm of a health maintenance organization (HMO) based in Minneapolis.

But this study is important because it “gets closer to how women take vitamin D now,” as a way build bone density, Rossom added.

Her team’s report, which is published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, is also the first to use the rigorous approach known as a randomized, double-blind trial with a placebo group to look at the possible effects of vitamin D and calcium on cognitive decline.

Rossom and her colleagues analyzed data on 4,100 women who were simultaneously enrolled in two trials, including the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Calcium and Vitamin D trial that ended in 2005, and a WHI memory study.

All of the women, who averaged 71 years old at the outset of the studies, were also free of cognitive problems to start.

Half of the women were assigned to take the supplements and the rest were given identical looking dummy pills.

Ultimately, about 100 women, or five percent, in each group developed mild cognitive impairment – a term that can include everything from memory trouble to the serious dementia found in Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers note that since the study ended, guidelines on vitamin and mineral intakes have changed. Currently the U.S. Institute of Medicine suggests getting 600 IUs per day of vitamin D for men and women up to age 70, and 800 IUs for older people. Suggested calcium amounts range from 700 mg to 1,300 mg per day, based on age, with an upper limit of 3000 mg. In both cases, intake recommendations cover both food and supplement sources.

So, the authors point out, their findings are specific only to the assigned amounts of vitamin D and calcium taken by women in the study – which are relatively low by today’s standards.

More than 16 million Americans suffer from some form of cognitive impairment, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the problem is expected to grow as more baby boomers age. Vitamin D might still be viewed as potentially offering a measure of protection against a condition with no formal treatment, if its effects can be decisively demonstrated.

“The sum of information shows conflicting evidence,” said Katherine Tucker of Northeastern University, who was not involved in the current study.

“Some recent studies suggest that too much calcium could have negative effects. The preponderance of evidence shows that vitamin D is protective, but some studies have shown no effect,” she told Reuters Health.

But, Tucker said, “This study by no means closes the door on the need for more research to clarify vitamin D’s effects.”

Rossom’s team acknowledges their study’s limitations. In addition to the doses of supplements in the trial, the results are strictly limited to women, who were mostly white. Also, older age is a significant risk factor for dementia and the study participants, by comparison, were relatively young.

“The next step is to test a higher dose of vitamin D,” said study coauthor JoAnn Manson of Harvard Medical School. “Higher doses will bring a study population to an achieved blood level that has been associated with reduced risk of cognitive decline in (past) studies.”

Manson is currently leading a large clinical trial designed primarily to look at the effects of vitamin D and omega-3′s on cancer risk, but the study will also monitor cognitive function. Results are expected in 2017.

A French study slated to finish next year is examining the cognitive effects of vitamin D versus a placebo in patients who already have Alzheimer’s disease.

“The bottom line is that we still just don’t know,” Tucker told Reuters Health. “We’re in the process of gathering more scientific evidence and will need to continue to do so until more studies point in a certain direction.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/VCIs9H Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, online November 23, 2012.

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Freeport downgraded as analysts question shift into energy, stock slips

(Reuters) – Shares of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc fell further on Thursday, a day after it said it had struck deals to expand into energy by acquiring Plains Exploration & Production Co and McMoRan Exploration Co for $ 9 billion, and at least four analysts downgraded the miner’s stock.

The transactions, valued at $ 19.6 billion including debt, were lambasted by investors and analysts alike as being unnecessary and a distraction from Freeport‘s copper business.

Freeport shares fell 5 percent to a 15-month low of $ 30.58 in morning trade before recovering slightly. The stock fell 15 percent on Wednesday after the announcement of the deals.

The investor backlash was exacerbated by the disclosure after the announcement that shareholders won’t be allowed to vote on the deal, meaning the only way they have to express their dissatisfaction is to dump the stock.

“We believe that Freeport stock will remain in the penalty box for the foreseeable future and multiples will remain depressed on the back of these acquisition announcements, given investor uncertainty on the strategic merit,” analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote in a research note.

The move into oil and gas means the company will lose its status as a pure-play copper and gold miner, analysts said.

“Freeport’s diversification into oil and gas arguably removes a key investment draw of the company in its copper exposure,” BMO Capital Markets analysts wrote.

Evy Hambro, a managing director at BlackRock, one of Freeport’s top-five shareholders, condemned the deal on Wednesday, saying there was no reason why the three companies should be put together.

Plains shares, which rose 23.4 percent on Wednesday, were down 2.2 percent at $ 43.48 while McMoRan Exploration‘s shares, which had risen 87 percent, were down 3.4 percent at $ 15.27.

The deal’s high debt component was also viewed as negative.

Standard & Poor’s cut its rating outlook on Freeport to negative from stable, including the company’s BBB corporate credit rating. “The negative outlook on Freeport reflects the leveraged nature of the proposed acquisitions, as well as risks associated with integrating the targeted companies,” S&P said.

The cost of protecting debt issued by Freeport against potential default fell slightly after rising sharply on Wednesday immediately after the deal announcement.

Five-year credit default swaps were 1.5 basis points tighter at 153 basis points. That means it costs $ 153,000 a year to protect $ 10 million of debt for five years. The CDS widened about 12 percent on Wednesday.

Yield spreads on the company’s 3.55 percent bonds due March, 2022 widened another 4 basis points to 206 basis points over 10-year Treasuries.

INVESTOR CONCERNS

Freeport said on Wednesday that the rationale for entering into the deal was to use low-cost financing available to the company to make attractive investments.

But analysts including Citigroup’s Brian Yu said there was no or little strategic fit or rationale for the deal.

Yu said he expected the deal to dilute Freeport’s 2013 earnings per share by 3.2 percent.

The Goldman Sachs analysts said Freeport would have to address investor concerns about the valuations of the deal, considering cross-ownership and management links among the three companies.

Both Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold and the company now known as McMoRan Exploration Co were spun off in the 1980s and 1990s from the former Freeport-McMoRan Inc.

Jim Bob Moffett is chairman of Freeport-McMoRan and co-chairman and chief executive of McMoRan Exploration. In addition, Plains owns nearly one-third of McMoRan Exploration’s shares after a 2010 asset sale.

Some analysts said the $ 6.9 billion deal for Plains undervalued the company, while $ 2.1 billion for McMoRan was on the high end.

“If the high risk ultra-deep drilling does not work, Freeport greatly overpaid for McMoRan in our view,” analysts at RBC Capital Markets said.

McMoRan has struggled with delays at its Davy Jones deep gas prospect off Louisiana.

Analysts at Nomura said the high debt load made a special dividend less likely and eroded any takeover premium in Freeport’s stock.

Nomura cut its price target on Freeport’s stock to $ 36 from $ 40, while UBS decreased its target $ 40 from $ 47.

Freeport shares were down 3.9 percent at $ 30.91 in early afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Swetha Gopinath in Bangalore; Editing by Ted Kerr)

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Death toll from Philippine typhoon nears 300

NEW BATAAN, Philippines (AP) — Stunned parents searching for missing children examined a row of mud-stained bodies covered with banana leaves while survivors dried their soaked belongings on roadsides Wednesday, a day after a powerful typhoon killed nearly 300 people in the southern Philippines.

Officials fear more bodies may be found as rescuers reach hard-hit areas that were isolated by landslides, floods and downed communications.

At least 151 people died in the worst-hit province of Compostela Valley when Typhoon Bopha lashed the region Tuesday, including 78 villagers and soldiers who perished in a flash flood that swamped two emergency shelters and a military camp, provincial spokeswoman Fe Maestre said.

Disaster-response agencies reported 284 dead in the region and 14 fatalities elsewhere from the typhoon, one of the strongest to hit the country this year.

About 80 people survived the deluge in New Bataan with injuries, and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, who visited the town, said 319 others remained missing.

“These were whole families among the registered missing,” Roxas told the ABS-CBN TV network. “Entire families may have been washed away.”

The farming town of 45,000 people was a muddy wasteland of collapsed houses and coconut and banana trees felled by Bopha’s ferocious winds.

Bodies of victims were laid on the ground for viewing by people searching for missing relatives. Some were badly mangled after being dragged by raging flood waters over rocks and other debris. A man sprayed insecticide on the remains to keep away swarms of flies.

A father wept when he found the body of his child after lifting a plastic cover. A mother, meanwhile, went away in tears, unable to find her missing children. “I have three children,” she said repeatedly, flashing three fingers before a TV cameraman.

Two men carried the mud-caked body of an unidentified girl that was covered with coconut leaves on a makeshift stretcher made from a blanket and wooden poles.

Dionisia Requinto, 43, felt lucky to have survived with her husband and their eight children after swirling flood waters surrounded their home. She said they escaped and made their way up a hill to safety, bracing themselves against boulders and fallen trees as they climbed.

“The water rose so fast,” she told AP. “It was horrible. I thought it was going to be our end.”

In nearby Davao Oriental, the coastal province first struck by the typhoon as it blew from the Pacific Ocean, at least 115 people perished, mostly in three towns that were so battered that it was hard to find any buildings with roofs remaining, provincial officer Freddie Bendulo and other officials said.

“We had a problem where to take the evacuees. All the evacuation centers have lost their roofs,” Davao Oriental Gov. Corazon Malanyaon said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies issued an urgent appeal for $ 4.8 million to help people directly affected by the typhoon.

The sun was shining brightly for most of the day Wednesday, prompting residents to lay their soaked clothes, books and other belongings out on roadsides to dry and revealing the extent of the damage to farmland. Thousands of banana trees in one Compostela Valley plantation were toppled by the wind, the young bananas still wrapped in blue plastic covers.

But as night fell, however, rain started pouring again over New Bataan, triggering panic among some residents who feared a repeat of the previous day’s flash floods. Some carried whatever belongings they could as they hurried to nearby towns or higher ground.

After slamming into Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley, Bopha roared quickly across the southern Mindanao and central regions, knocking out power in two entire provinces, triggering landslides and leaving houses and plantations damaged. More than 170,000 fled to evacuation centers.

As of Wednesday evening, the typhoon was over the South China Sea west of Palawan province. It was blowing northwestward and could be headed to Vietnam or southern China, according to government forecasters.

The deaths came despite efforts by President Benigno Aquino III’s government to force residents out of high-risk communities as the typhoon approached.

Some 20 typhoons and storms lash the northern and central Philippines each year, but they rarely hit the vast southern Mindanao region where sprawling export banana plantations have been planted over the decades because it seldom experiences strong winds that could blow down the trees.

A rare storm in the south last December killed more than 1,200 people and left many more homeless.

The United States extended its condolences and offered to help its Asian ally deal with the typhoon’s devastation. It praised government efforts to minimize the deaths and damage.

___

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Teresa Cerojano and Oliver Teves in Manila contributed to this report.

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Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck dead at 91

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, whose choice of novel rhythms, classical structures and brilliant sidemen made him a towering figure in modern jazz, has died at the age of 91, his longtime manager and producer Russell Gloyd said on Wednesday.

Brubeck died of heart failure on Wednesday morning after he fell ill on his way to a regular medical exam at Norwalk Hospital, in Norwalk, Conn., a day short of his 92nd birthday, Gloyd said.

His Dave Brubeck Quartet put out one of the best selling jazz songs of all time: “Take Five,” composed by alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. Like many of the group’s works, it had an unusual beat — 5/4 time as opposed to the usual 4/4.

“We play it differently every time we play it,” Brubeck told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2005. “So I never get tired of playing it. That’s the beauty of jazz.”

“Take Five” was the first million-selling jazz single.

Dressed in a suit and horn-rimmed glasses and living a clean-cut lifestyle in the 1950s, Brubeck did not fit the stereotype of a hipster jazzman and his music was not nearly as brooding as that coming from East Coast be-bop players.

Despite his innovative approach, some critics interpreted Brubeck’s popularity as a sign of un-coolness, but his fans were undeterred.

Brubeck was born in Concord, California, on December 6, 1920. His father was a rancher and as a teenager Brubeck was a skilled cowboy. But his mother, a music teacher who had five pianos in the house, saw that he took up piano at age 5.

At the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California, he planned to be a veterinarian, but within a year he was majoring in music and playing jazz in nightclubs.

“After my first year in veterinary pre-med I switched to the music department … and that was at the advice of my zoology teacher,” Brubeck said in a Reuters interview. “He said ‘Brubeck, your mind is not here, with these frogs and formaldehyde. Your mind is across the lawn at the conservatory. Will you please go over there.’”

Brubeck later met the co-director of a weekly campus radio show, Iola Marie Whitlock, and they eventually married.

After graduation, Brubeck studied under French composer Darius Milhaud and played in a U.S. Army jazz band during World War Two.

In the late 1940s, he moved to the San Francisco Bay area, where he headed an experimental jazz octet. He formed a trio in 1950 and the following year expanded to a quartet with Desmond, who he had known since the war.

Brubeck injected classical counterpoint, atonal harmonies and modern dissonance into his music, hinting at composers such as Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky and Bach.

The group built an enduring fan base by taking its subdued bluesy brand of classically influenced jazz to colleges.

As a leading figure in the West Coast jazz scene, which also included Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, Brubeck was featured in a Time magazine cover story in 1954. Some critics and black musicians, who felt jazz was a central part of black culture, resented the story about the prominence of a white artist.

In the article Brubeck said Milhaud had told him “if I didn’t stick to jazz, I’d be working out of my own field and not taking advantage of my American heritage.”

Brubeck disbanded the quartet in 1967 after nearly 17 years to concentrate on composing. He wrote several choral works, all religiously influenced.

He later began performing jazz regularly again and appeared with his sons, Darius, a composer and pianist; Chris, who played electric bass and trombone; and drummer Danny. They were billed as Two Generations of Brubeck.

In February 1989 Brubeck, who had a history of heart problems, underwent triple-bypass surgery but kept playing. Well into his 80s, he still put on some 80 shows a year. He had a pacemaker implanted in October 2010.

Actor-director Clint Eastwood, a jazz fan, announced plans to make a documentary on Brubeck in 2007. Eastwood also was named chairman of the Brubeck Institute at the University of the Pacific, designated as the home of his papers, private recordings and other memorabilia.

Brubeck and his wife, who also was his agent and lyricist, had two other sons, Matthew, a cellist, and Michael, and a daughter, Catherine. The couple lived in Wilton, Connecticut.

(Reporting by Christine Kearney; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

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