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Jazz composer and pianist Dave Brubeck died from heart failure on Wednesday while on his way to an appointment with his cardiologist. The Take Five musician was with his son Darius when he passed away in Connecticut, his manager Russell Gloyd said.

Brubeck would have turned 92 on Thursday. 

He had a career that spanned almost all American jazz since World War II. He formed The Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951 and was the first modern jazz musician to be pictured on the cover of Time magazine - on November 8, 1954 - and he helped define the swinging, smoky rhythms of 1950s and 60s club jazz. The seminal album Time Out, released by the quartet in 1959, was the first ever million-selling jazz LP, and is still among the best-selling jazz albums of all time. It opens with Blue Rondo A La Turk in 9/8 time - nine beats to the measure instead of the customary two, three or four beats. A piano-and-saxophone whirlwind based loosely on a Mozart piece, Blue Rondo eventually intercuts between Brubeck's piano and a more traditional 4/4 jazz rhythm.

The album also features Take Five - in 5/4 time - which became the Quartet's signature theme and even made the Billboard singles chart in 1961. It was composed by Brubeck's longtime saxophonist, Paul Desmond.

'When you start out with goals - mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically - you never exhaust that,' Brubeck told the Associated Press in 1995. 'I started doing that in the 1940s. It's still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements.'

After service in World War II and study at Mills College in Oakland, California, Brubeck formed an octet including Desmond on alto sax and Dave van Kreidt on tenor, Cal Tjader on drums and Bill Smith on clarinet. The group played Brubeck originals and standards by other composers, including some early experimentation in unusual time signatures. Their groundbreaking album Dave Brubeck Octet was recorded in 1946.

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On Monday, Pope Benedict XVI will officially join millions of people around the globe by launching his own Twitter account. The formal announcement is set for a press conference Monday morning at the Vatican with Catholic and Twitter officials.

A Vatican official said the pope will be composing the tweets for the new account himself. For the first tweet from the account, the pope will also press the button to send the tweet himself, but after that others will send the tweets on his behalf.

In June 2011 the pope sent his first tweet from the Twitter account for the Vatican news site, @news_va_en. to launch the new site www.news.va.  He wrote, “Dear friends, I just launched News.va. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI.”

That signature has led some to guess that @BenedictusPPXVI will be the account name for the 85-year-old pope's personal account, although @Pope would seem to be fitting as well. (Benedictus PP XVI is the pontiff's signature in Latin, with the "PP" standing for papa, the Latin word for pope.)

More details on the long-expected event will be revealed at the press conference featuring Vatican officials, including spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi and Greg Burke, media adviser to the Secretariat of State, who will be joined by Claire Díaz-Ortiz, who heads social innovation at Twitter.  Burke is a relatively new addition to the Vatican staff, having been recruited away from the Fox News Channel, where he was Rome correspondent.  Díaz-Ortiz has been influential in getting religious leaders to join the social networking site.

Other religious leaders have found great success with Twitter.  The 140-character limit for tweets allows for short messages, perfect for small verses of scripture or inspiration.

The Dalia Lama (@DalaiLama), Rick Warren (@RickWarren), Joel Osteen (@JoelOsteen), and scores of other religious leaders utilize the site to spread their messages.

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