Dave Brubeck (AP Photo)

Years before the pianist formed his legendary quartet with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond in 1951, Brubeck began his musical career as a teenager playing in big bands in dance halls in Sierra Nevada towns near the northern California cattle ranch where he grew up.

At Wednesday night's concert at Carnegie Hall, Brubeck recalled the music of his youth from the Swing Era with his composition "The Basie Band Is Back in Town," in which he played some stride piano and his big band incorporated some characteristic Count Basie riffs. For an encore, the Brubeck big band played the Duke Ellington Orchestra's theme, "Take the `A' Train."

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The highlight of the big-band segment of the program was a rare live performance of "Elementals," a composition Brubeck wrote in 1963 for orchestra and jazz quartet that interweaves fundamental elements of Western music: Gregorian chants, a Bach chorale, a Viennese waltz, jazz swing, polyrhythms, and 12 tone. Last fall, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company premiered a ballet in New York, "Elemental Brubeck," choreographed to music from "Elementals."

The big band -- which incorporated Brubeck's quartet at its core -- added a whole rich palette of orchestral colors from the trumpet, trombone and sax sections to two famed odd-metered tunes from his groundbreaking 1959 "Time Out" album: "Blue Rondo a la Turk," based on the 9/8 rhythms the pianist heard Turkish street musicians play in Istanbul during a State Department tour, and Desmond's "Take Five" with its compelling 5/4 rhythm.

Comedian Bill Cosby, an avid jazz fan who plays the drums, hosted the concert and recalled the first time he shared a bill with Brubeck back in the early 1960s at the Concord Pavilion in northern California. Cosby urged the audience to savor the moment because we can't act "as though our geniuses will always be alongside us."

"I'm not saying that Dave is leaving," quipped the 68-year-old Cosby. "There's nothing wrong with 85 except being 68 and trying to get there."

The silver-haired Brubeck, who turned 85 on Dec. 6, received a standing ovation before playing a single note, opening the program with his quartet with the hard-blowing alto saxophonist Bobby Militello, the versatile bassist Michael Moore, and drummer Randy Jones, who has been with Brubeck for nearly a quarter century.

Though frail in body and less talkative than usual, Brubeck was a commanding presence at the keyboard, playing a multitude of styles in his improvisations, as the quartet re-imagined such standards as "Stormy Weather" and Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays."

Brubeck played an exquisite solo demonstrating a deft touch in the introduction to the ballad "Theme for June," written by his late older brother Howard Brubeck. The quartet was also up to the challenge on Brubeck's demanding briskly tempoed new composition "London Flat, London Sharp."

In a comic interlude before the big band took the stage, Cosby mused about the aging process. "We have no right to live to be 90 and 100," the comic said, and pointing to the short distance from the stage door to the piano, joked, "Dave is able to walk from there and back and know who he is."

Brubeck, who will be touring in the U.S. this summer with his quartet, is hard at work on his next major composition, which will take him back to the California of his youth. He has been commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival to write a suite based on John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row," which is to have its premiere at the festival on Sept. 17. Singers Kurt Elling and Roberta Gamberini will be performing lyrics penned by Brubeck's longtime collaborator, his wife, Iola.

"I love the book. I love the characters. I knew the pre-tourist Monterey that Steinbeck described, and I've known such characters that he has portrayed," Brubeck wrote in his latest newsletter.

www.brubeckinstitute.org