First Canadian stamp honouring a living individual not from the British Royal Family

Canadiana Suite

Night Train

Ella and Oscar

The Very Best of ....

First Recordings

Nigerian Marketplace

Live at the Blue Note

OSCAR PETERSON
(Aug. 15, 1925 - Dec. 23, 2007) 

Politicians, musicians pause to remember jazz great Oscar Peterson

Politicians and musical luminaries expressed shocked condolences and shared fond memories Monday after hearing reports that jazz great Oscar Peterson had died at age 82.

"What can you say about playing with somebody who was such a giant, who made such a huge contribution to jazz piano?" asked jazz guitarist Lorne Lofsky, who worked with Peterson off and on in the 1980s and 1990s, and was part of his quartet that played Carnegie Hall and toured Europe.

"It was very challenging to play with him in many different ways. You know, I learned a lot from playing with him and it was great, what I would call on-the-job training ... playing in a situation like that where you never know what's going to happen from one moment to the next."

Peterson died of kidney failure, at age 82.

Tracy Biddle, whose late father Charles was a close friend of Peterson's and a pillar of the Montreal jazz community, was floored when she heard the news.

"He really put Montreal on the map of jazz," Biddle said in an interview in Montreal. "I believe that on a grander scale, the impact he had on the black community and on the whole musical community was huge."

"He broke out of Canada. He's one of the first people. We talk of Celine Dion and Shania Twain and Alanis Morissette and Bryan Adams. Oscar Peterson did what they did years ago as a black person. So what he's done is incredible."

The keyboard titan, who recorded almost 200 albums, played alongside the greats of the jazz world: Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.

"It makes you want to sing," the late Fitzgerald once said of Peterson's piano work.

Peterson's style, somewhere between swing and bop, was considered technically dazzling, keenly aware of the roots of jazz and fearless in its improvisational scope. While some critics said he used too many notes in his music, others said the 100-plus notes allowed for a dazzling work of art.

"There's an extreme joy I get in playing that I've never been able to explain," Peterson said in a 1996 interview. "I can only transmit it through the playing; I can't put it into words."

Throughout his life, Peterson was showered with awards, honorary degrees and national honours.

He collected eight Grammys, including a lifetime achievement award in 1997, hundreds of prizes from the jazz community, the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for lifetime achievement and was a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 2005 Canada Post marked his contribution to music with a 50-cent stamp.

The world-renowned pianist toured extensively during his career, bringing his easy-swinging sounds to virtually every major concert hall around the globe, and recording some of the country's most distinctive music including "Canadiana Suite" and "Hymn to Freedom."

Peterson was frequently invited to perform for various luminaries including the Queen and U.S. President Richard Nixon.

"The piano is like an extension of his own physical being," composer Phil Nimmons, who helped create "Canadiana Suite," said in 1975 of his longtime friend.

"I'm amazed at the speed of his creativity. I am not talking about mere technical capabilities, although his are awesome. I'm speaking of the times when you find him under optimum conditions of creativity. His mind can move as quickly as his fingers and that is what is so astounding."

One of the first black artists to achieve prominence in the white-dominated music industry of the 1950s, Peterson spent a great deal of his life acting as a spokesman for minority rights, drawing on his experiences growing up in the impoverished St. Antoine district of Montreal.

Peterson began playing the piano and trumpet as a young boy under the stern tutelage of his father, Daniel Peterson, a West Indian immigrant who worked as a railway porter.

He continued with his piano studies under the watch of his older sister Daisy after tuberculosis damaged his lungs at age six.

At 14, Peterson earned his first break, winning the CBC's national amateur contest (and $250). With his father's permission, Peterson dropped out of school to focus on his budding career.

As the only black member of a dance band, he was frequently subjected to the racism of the decade. One of the first black artists to achieve prominence in the white-dominated music industry of the 1950s, Peterson spent a great deal of his life acting as a spokesman for minority rights, drawing on his experiences growing up.

The manager of Montreal's Ritz-Carlton Hotel once phoned band leader Johnny Holmes two days before a big event to declare that blacks weren't welcome in the hotel. The manager eventually backed down after Holmes threatened to put a notice in local newspapers saying the hotel barred blacks.

"In all the years that Oscar and I have been friends, he'd never really lamented or even discussed the discrimination that he suffered as a child and as a young man," said Gene Lees, a longtime friend of Peterson's who also penned the musician's biography, The Will to Swing. "(It's) a magnificent triumph of the human spirit."

International exposure came in 1948 when Norman Granz, producer of Jazz at the Philharmonic, heard Peterson on Montreal radio and later invited the 24-year-old to New York to play as a surprise guest at the prestigious Carnegie Hall. After the performance, the young talent joined the troupe and toured North America with them for two years.

Peterson, whose career was managed by Granz for over 30 years, formed a trio in 1951 with Ray Brown on bass and Charlie Smith on drums and continued playing with the prestigious group.

His most famous threesome was with Herb Ellis and Ray Brown who were often cited as one of the world's finest jazz combos.

"You saw the greatness immediately," Ellis once said of Peterson. "He was awesome right away - always."

Although Peterson was one of Canada's leading artistic exports, he was frequently mistaken as an American because of his Jazz at the Philharmonic performances.

"I've achieved a funny kind of status in Canada," he once said. "Most of it comes because I went to the United States and other places, and as a result of Canadians having seen me repeatedly on the television shows of people like Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin . . . I think that has weighed heavily with Canadians."

But he loved his home country and had lived in Mississauga, Ont., since the late 1950s.

He was also well known for his kindness towards young artists, having tutored many an aspiring pianist.

Diana Krall credits Peterson for prompting her to pursue a musical career after catching one of his concerts as a young girl.

"You inspire me to no end every day," she told him in 2005 during a ceremony unveiling a Canada Post stamp in his honour.

In his efforts to coach youth, Peterson helped open Toronto's Advanced School of Contemporary Music in 1960 only to see his beloved project fail due to financial difficulties three years later. He didn't give up, serving as an adjunct music professor at York University in the mid-1980s and as its chancellor in the early 1990s.

Arthritis became a problem for the charming musician in the 1980s, causing him some pain in his hands and difficulty in walking yet he never seemed to slow down.

In 1993, at 68, he suffered a stroke which incapacitated his left hand. Peterson recovered and resumed performing two years later.

He then released "A Summer Night in Munich," a live recording of old and new material; an instructional CD-ROM; and "Trail of Dreams," a musical portrait of Canada commemorating the Trans Canada Trail.

"Age doesn't seem to enter into my thought to that great an extent," he said in 2001. "I just figure that the love I have of the instrument and my group and the medium itself works as a sort of a rejuvenating factor for me."

Peterson leaves behind wife, Kelly, and their daughter Celine.

Source: Canadian Press