Catholic jazz icon, Dave Brubeck is to be honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts.
The renowned musician, whose signature tune ‘Take Five’ is loved worldwide, will receive his honour on 6 December in Washington.
Ahead of the presentation, the musician said that music can be the language to help bring people together, crossing any nation's boundary and driving freedom throughout the world.
"Jazz represents freedom, freedom musically and politically," he said. He noted that his 1958 tour targeted countries such as Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq and was meant to show "how important freedom is."
In 1958, Brubeck led his Dave Brubeck Quartet on a 14-country "goodwill" tour through Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Brubeck, 88, became a Catholic after the 1980 premier of his composition of the Catholic Mass, "To Hope! A Celebration."
The Mass has been performed throughout the world, including in Russia in 1997 and before Pope John Paul II 10 years earlier in San Francisco during the pontiff's pilgrimage to the US.
Brubeck says he does not draw distinctions between his work as an orchestral and chorale composer and his performances as one of the world's most foremost jazz bandleaders.
Jazz and the sacred, he said, "have always been close."
