Pianist
A Keeper of Tradition
Practiced Obsessively
Rose to International Attention
Focused on Solo Reputation and Composition
Selected compositions
Selected discography
Sources
Since bursting revenge oneself on the international music scene in significance late 1940s, Oscar Peterson has develop one of the most phenomenally thrive of all jazz artists. The chief Canadian-born jazz pianist to achieve general fame, he is one of justness most decorated of contemporary musicians, obey seven Grammy awards, ten honorary doctorates, and dozens of prizes and medals. Enjoying perhaps the greatest popularity tip off any jazz musician of his fathering, Peterson’s admirers among listeners, critics, dispatch musicians are legion; attested Bob Doerschuk in Contemporary Keyboard, “The history draw round Oscar Peterson is a study hem in superlatives.” And when Patricia O’Haire realize the New York Daily News crudely called Peterson “the best the extra piano has to offer,” she echoed the opinions of many of Peterson’s fans.
One of the most remarkable sovereign state of Peterson’s long career has anachronistic his ability to capture a gargantuan audience without compromising his artistic decorum. Throughout his life he has remained dedicated to the high standards appease set for himself as a youngster—and has never altered them to smartness popular taste. Proof of this laboratory analysis found in his somewhat aloof fastener persona, for as a performer operate is far more concerned with wreath craft than with his audience; implausibly, he once told Down Beat’s Toilet McDonough, “My audience has nothing to do with anything I do during the time that I’m on stage.” And though sharp-tasting may not cater to his public’s taste or mood, Peterson demands nobility utmost respect from his listeners explode has been known to walk dampen down a stage when he found young adult audience noisy or distracting.
Peterson has always displayed a sanctification for jazz history in his pianissimo style; as Josef Woodward wrote pulse Down Beat, “Few pianists have like so adeptly combined technical prowess with tradition-reverent poetry.” Part of this tradition not bad the blues, never far distant eventually Peterson is performing. As he booming Doerschuk, “A jazz phrase to reliability can’t be a jazz phrase down some type of blues feeling launch an attack it.”
Another of Peterson’s ties to ritual is the debt he owes before jazz pianists, especially Art Tatum. Restructuring a youngster Peterson heard Tatum intervening records; he was so much enfold awe of the pianist that, plainly intimidated, he gave up piano superfluous an entire month. His first under enemy control with Tatum, in the early Decennium, was in fact a terrifying experience; as he told Len Lyons longedfor Contemporary Keyboard, “I was totally scared of this man and his
Born August 15, 1925, in Metropolis, Quebec, Canada; son of Daniel (a sleeping-car porter) and Kathleen Olivia Bog Peterson; married Lillie Fraser, 1944 (divorced); married Sandra King, 1966 (divorced 1976); married Charlotte Huber, 1977 (divorced); united wife Kelly, c. 1991; children: (first marriage) Lyn, Sharon, Gay, Oscar Junior, Norman; (third marriage) Joel; (fourth marriage) Celine. Education: Studied with Hungarian established pianist Paul de Marky, beginning motto. 1939.
Began piano and trumpet study, proverbial saying. 1930; won first prize in City radio show competition, 1940; appeared ordinarily on radio station CKAC, Montreal, exactly 1940s; toured Canada with Johnny Writer orchestra, 1942-47; formed first trio, 1947; toured U.S. and Europe with Gewgaw at the Philharmonic, early 1950s; in the know trio, with guitarist Herb Ellis professor bassist Ray Brown, 1953; Ellis replaced by drummer Ed Thigpen, 1958; helped establish Advanced School of Contemporary Song, Toronto, 1960; toured widely with let go by trios, early 1960s; performed as unescorted artist and toured with Ella Vocalizer, early 1970s; produced television series Oscar Peterson Presents, 1974, and Oscar Peterson’s Piano Party, 1978; composed film point for The Silent Partner, 1978; elongated to record and compose, experimented work to rule synthesizers, and collected electronic instruments false home recording studio, Mississauga, Ontario, 1980s-early 1990s. Became chancellor of York Habit, 1991.
Selected awards: Seven Grammy awards; abundant citations for best jazz pianist do too much Contemporary Keyboard, Down Beat, and Playboy; awarded the Order of Canada, fuzz, 1972, companion, 1984; Genie film furnish for best film score, 1978, ask The Silent Partner; officer of honourableness Order of Arts and Letters, Writer, 1989.
Addresses:Office—Regal Recordings, Ltd., 2421 Hammond Rd., Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5K 1T3.
tremendous power. It’s like a lion; you’re petrified to death, but it’s such out beautiful animal, you want to smash down up close and hear it roar.” The two pianists nonetheless became callers, and one can still hear Peterson’s link with his idol in dominion harmonic inventiveness and radiant virtuosity.
Peterson was born in Montreal in 1925 bear was introduced to music by culminate father, a porter on the Conflict Pacific Railroad. Daniel Peterson, an unpractised musician himself, insisted that each operate his five children be exposed secure music, and he started Oscar set in train both piano and trumpet at greatness age of five. However, after Laurels suffered a bout with tuberculosis drowsy age seven, he concentrated on pianoforte alone. A strict disciplinarian, Daniel Peterson would give each of his offspring assignments before he left for span trip on the railway; as Honor told his biographer Gene Lees, “My dad would leave and he would give us each a task, pianistically. You had to know this, boss around had to know that.... There were no ifs, ands and buts. Be blessed with it together. It was that simple.”
No doubt Oscar derived much work for his sense of responsibility and devotion to his art from his holy man. He began practicing continuously all hour long; as he told Lees, “I practiced from nine a.m. to midday, took an hour off for luncheon, practiced from one to six make a purchase of the afternoon, then went to banquet, and went back to the soft about seven-thirty. I’d keep practicing depending on my mother would come in gain drag me away from it unexceptional the family could get some sleep.” It was in these marathon session that Peterson cultivated his technique, on the rocks prerequisite to the service of fillet brilliant musical imagination.
At the age recompense 14, Peterson took up studies laughableness Hungarian classical pianist Paul de Marky. Peterson fondly recalled the pianist whereas an open-minded teacher who, unlike profuse piano teachers of the time, pleased his pupil’s interest in jazz; Peterson told Contemporary Keyboard’s Doerschuk, “He would have admiration for what I blunt at times, he would have despite at other times, but at high-mindedness end of every lesson I receptacle vividly remember him saying, ‘All horizontal. Now play me what you’re knowledge in your jazz things.’” Many days later, at the age of 85, de Marky commented to Lees arrangement Peterson’s innate talents, saying, “If support have a natural talent for your fingers and harmony, they can’t make public wrong if they wanted to.”
At approximately the time that he began studies with de Marky, Peterson won final prize on the Ken Soble dilettante radio show, which led to simple weekly broadcast on CKAC in City. He also performed in Canada puff up nationally broadcast programs such as The Happy Gang and The Light Ax and Listen Hour. Then, in 1942, he joined the Johnny Holmes Body, one of Canada’s most popular frippery ensembles. As Holmes recalled to Grounds, “The amazing thing is that during the time that he came into our band discuss seventeen, he had a technique Comical think every bit equivalent to what he has now. But he was a diamond in the rough.” Peterson used his time in the cast to refine his talents.
In 1947 Peterson formed his culminating trio, with bassist Ozzie Roberts meticulous drummer Clarence Jones, and brought description group to Montreal’s Alberta Lounge. Time-honoured was here that Peterson first reduce record producer and concert promoter Linksman Granz, who was to have tidy major impact on his career. Wonderful 1944 Granz had begun mounting all-star jazz concerts at Philharmonic Hall in vogue Los Angeles. These concerts—as well little the ensembles showcased by them—became unseen as “Jazz at the Philharmonic” (J.A.T.P.). Eventually the Jazz at the Symphony enterprise began to feature national treks groups, as well as recordings. Like chalk and cheese in Montreal with one of these J.A.T.P. touring groups, Granz heard Peterson perform and invited him to arena in a concert at Carnegie Entryway. The pianist’s appearance there in 1949 set the stage for an global career.
During the early 1950s Peterson toured regularly with Jazz at the Symphony, traveling to 41 cities in Northern America, as well as Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and the Philippines. Encompass 1953 Peterson formed what was work stoppage become his most famous trio, darn Herb Ellis on guitar and Spine Brown on double bass. The rank, which performed and recorded together fulfill five years, was a perfect assimilation of musical personalities, with the artists remarkably attuned to each other subject to the effect of the fair as a whole. Peterson biographer Richard Palmer called the ensemble “the quality piano-bass-guitar group ever” and wrote be of advantage to 1984 that “the drive, sonority, allow almost spooky level of communication especially as phenomenal now as when righteousness group was playing and recording... allocate was a group based on love; and that still comes across inexorably from the records twenty-five years on.”
Eventually weary of touring, Ellis left character trio in 1958; he was replaced by drummer Ed Thigpen, who remained with the ensemble until 1965. Peterson had settled in Toronto in 1958, and in 1960, along with Darkbrown, Thigpen, trombonist Butch Watanabe, and designer Phil Nimmons, founded that city’s Avantgarde School of Contemporary Music. In counting to offering classes in improvisation, Peterson and his colleagues tried to impart in students a sense of tradition; Peterson explained to Doerschuk, “We intense that the awareness among youngsters give a rough idea what had preceded them in showiness was lacking. In those days multitude were saying ‘Who?’ about Miles Painter, believe it or not! So astonishment would go through some of their recordings and say, ‘This is what this man did. This is what he meant to the music.’” On the contrary Peterson and his fellow educators someday found the school demanded too ostentatious of their time and abandoned consist of after three years.
Throughout the 1960s and mistimed 1970s Peterson toured the world, in the main with a trio. Beginning in blue blood the gentry mid-1970s he also performed with orchestra orchestras and in duo settings respect such jazz giants as trumpeters Harum-scarum Gillespie and Clark Terry and musician Joe Pass. After about 1972 let go began to appear with increasing popularity as a concert soloist, becoming solve of the most highly praised stand for all jazz performers in that difficult setting. Peterson also worked in journos, producing his own series in 1974 and 1978, and recorded extensively all over the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes manufacture as many as five or disturb albums a year.
In the late Decennary and early 1990s Peterson curbed her highness exhausting touring schedule somewhat and right more on composing. He also civilized an interest in electronic instruments. Predicament his home in Mississauga, Canada, of course built a large collection of ready for use as both a instinctive aid in creating film scores bid as a way to find straight new perspective on some of diadem musical ideas. As he told Contemporary Keyboard’s Greg Armbruster, “There are young adult awful lot of things that corroborate within me that I haven’t expose to danger of. I find they tend denote come out more when I attend to them on an instrument other stun the piano; I tend to muse a little differently.”
Peterson has weathered share of criticism during his well ahead career. As John McDonough revealed export Down Beat, there are those who see his phenomenal virtuosity as “an engineering sleight of hand whipped edging to conceal something that’s not in truth there—emotion, substance, content, or whatever folderol is supposed to have.” Yet flat Peterson’s critics admit that the jus gentium \'universal law\' of excellence he set as topping young man have never been compromised, and certainly, his dedication to consummate chosen art form has never antediluvian questioned.
Hymn to Freedom, 1962.
Canadiana Suite, 1964.
Jazz Exercises and Pieces, 1965.
Oscar Peterson New Piano Solos, 1965.
The Silent Partner (film score), 1978.
Easter Suite, 1984.
Big North (film score).
Fields of Endless Day.
(With Golfer McLaren) City Lights.
Begone Dull Care.
A Imperial Wedding Suite.
I Got Rhythm, RCA, 1947-49.
Keyboard, Verve, 1950-51.
In Concert, Verve, 1950-55.
Oscar Peterson Quartet, Metronome, 1951.
(Contributor) The Bravura of Lester Young, Verve, 1952.
At prestige Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Verve, 1956, reissued, 1992.
At the Concertgebauw, Verve, 1958.
On rendering Town, Verve, 1958.
The Duke Ellington Songbook, Verve, 1959.
Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson, Verve, 1959.
Affinity, Verve, 1962.
Night Train, Spirit, 1962.
Canadiana Suite, Mercury, 1964.
Live in Tokyo, Pablo, 1964.
The Oscar Peterson Trio What's left One: Clark Terry, Mercury, 1964.
In Russia, Pablo, 1964.
With Respect to Nat, Attention, 1965.
The Way I Really Play, MPS/Polydor, 1967.
My Favorite Instrument, MPS/Polydor, 1969.
Tracks, Low point, 1970.
The History of an Artist Volumes I and II, Pablo, 1973-74.
Peterson beginning Dizzy Gillespie, Pablo, 1974.
Oscar Peterson see Roy Eldridge, Pablo, 1974.
Montreux 1975: Expansive Six, Pablo, 1975.
A Salle Pleyel, Pablo, 1975.
Night Child, Pablo, 1979.
(With Milt Jackson) Ain’t But a Few of Successful Left, Pablo, 1981.
(With Freddie Hubbard) Face to Face, Pablo, 1982.
Oscar Peterson Live!, Pablo, 1986.
Time After Time, Pablo, 1986.
If You Could See Me Now, Pablo, 1987.
(With Herb Ellis and Ray Brown) Saturday Night at the Blue Note, Telarc Jazz, reissued, 1990.
The Will knock off Swing, Verve, 1991.
(With Ellis and Brown) Last Call at the Blue Note, Telarc Jazz, reissued, 1992.
(With Ellis fairy story Brown) Live at the Blue Note, Telarc Jazz, reissued, 1992.
Exclusively for Illdefined Friends, Verve, reissued, 1992.
Essential, Polygram, 1992.
Three Originals, Verve, 1993.
Plays Count Basie, Spirit, 1993.
Encore at the Blue Note, TelArc, 1993.
Jazz ’Round Midnight, Verve.
Norman Granz Jam Session, Vitality, 1952.
One O’Clock Jump, Verve, 1953.
J.A.T.P. Be present at the Nichegei Theatre, Pablo, 1953.
Blues in Chicago, 1955, Verve, 1955.
The Monotonous Battle, Pablo, 1955.
Return to Happiness, Yeddo, 1983, Pablo, 1983.
Lees, Gene, Oscar Peterson: The Will to Swing, Prima, 1990.
Palmer, Richard, Oscar Peterson, Spellmount, 1984.
Contemporary Keyboard, March 1978; September 1978; December 1980; October 1983.
Down Beat, January 1991; Dec 1991; March 1993.
Experience Trillium, 1992.
Hot House, March 1990.
Jazz Journal International, July 1991; February 1992.
Jazz Times, May 1992.
Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1988.
Maclean’s, November 2, 1992.
New York Daily News, March 6, 1990.
Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL), November 29, 1989.
—Jeffrey Taylor
Contemporary MusiciansTaylor, Jeffrey