Toronto Says Goodbye to a Legend: Oscar Peterson
contact December 27th, 2007
Canadian jazz piano virtuoso, Oscar Peterson, died on Sunday at the age of 82. A gentle giant of a man, Peterson set the standard for taste and invention and shaped the jazz scene indelibly in the history of music.
Although his greatest influence was undoubtedly Art Tatum, he incorporated elements of Nat King Cole and Teddy Wilson into his own inimitable sound. Norman Granz discovered him in 1949 and put him to work in his Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts.
In the early 1950s, Peterson began performing with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as the Oscar Peterson Trio. Shortly afterward the drummer Smith was replaced by guitarist Irving Ashby, formerly of the Nat King Cole Trio.
Since the late 1950s, when Oscar Peterson gained worldwide recognition as one of the leading pianists in jazz, he played in a variety of settings: solo, duo, trio, quartet, small bands, and big bands. However, his solo piano recitals, as well as his solo piano recordings were rare, until he chose to make a series of solo albums titled “Exclusively for my friends.” This solo piano sessions, made for the MPS label, were Peterson’s response to the emergence of such stars as Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner.
Oscar Peterson also taught piano and improvisation in Canada, mainly in Toronto. He also published his original jazz piano etudes for practice. However, he asked his students to study the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, especially the Well Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, and the The Art of Fugue, considering this piano pieces essential for every serious pianist. [source]