The History of Jazz Music ([email protected]) Today’s History Highlights feature Oscar Peterson Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, CC, CQ, OOnt (August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. He was called the Maharaja of the keyboard by Duke Ellington, but simply O.P. by his friends. He released over 200 recordings, won eight Grammy Awards, and received other numerous awards and honours. He is considered to have been one of the greatest jazz pianists, having played thousands of live concerts to audiences worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years Peterson was born to immigrants from the West Indies; his father worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railway. Peterson grew up in the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy in Montreal, Quebec. It was in this predominantly black neighbourhood that he found himself surrounded by the jazz culture that flourished in the early 20th century. At the age of five, Peterson began honing his skills with the trumpet and piano. However, a bout of tuberculosis when he was seven prevented him from playing the trumpet again, and so he directed all his attention to the piano. His father, Daniel Peterson, an amateur trumpeter and pianist, was one of his first music teachers, and his sister Daisy taught young Oscar classical piano. Young Oscar was persistent at practising scales and classical etudes daily, and thanks to such arduous practice he developed his astonishing virtuosity. As a child, Peterson also studied with Hungarian-born pianist Paul de Marky, a student of István Thomán, who was himself a pupil of Franz Liszt, so his training was predominantly based on classical piano. Meanwhile he was captivated by traditional jazz and learned several ragtime pieces and especially the boogie-woogie. At that time Peterson was called the Brown Bomber of the Boogie-Woogie. At the age of nine Peterson played piano with control that impressed professional musicians. For many years his piano studies included four to six hours of practice daily. Only in his later years did he decrease his daily practice to just one or two hours. In 1940, at fourteen years of age, Peterson won the national music competition organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After that victory, he dropped out of school and became a professional pianist working for a weekly radio show, and playing at hotels and music halls. Some of the artists who influenced Petersons music during the earlier type of years were Teddy Wilson, Nat King Cole, James P. Johnson and Art Tatum, to whom many have tried to compare Peterson in later years. One of his first exposures to Tatums musical talents came early in his teen years when his father played Art Tatums Tiger Rag for him, and Peterson was so intimidated by what he heard that he became disillusioned about his own playing, to the extent of refusing to play the piano at all for several weeks. In his own words, Tatum scared me to death and Peterson was never cocky again about his mastery at the piano. Tatum was a model for Petersons musicianship during the 1940s and 1950s. Tatum and Peterson eventually became good friends, although Peterson was always shy about being compared with Tatum and rarely played the piano in Tatums presence. Peterson has also credited his sister Daisy Sweeney — a noted piano teacher in Montreal who also taught several other noted Canadian jazz musicians — with being an important teacher and influence on his career. Under his sisters tutelage, Peterson expanded into classical piano training and broadened his range while mastering the core classical pianism from scales to preludes and fugues by Johann Sebastian Bach. Building on Art Tatums pianism and aesthetics, Peterson also absorbed Tatums musical influences, notably from piano concertos by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoffs harmonizations, as well as direct quotations from his 2nd Piano Concerto, are thrown in here and there in many recordings by Peterson, including his work with the most familiar formulation of the Oscar Peterson Trio, with bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis. During the 1960s and 1970s Peterson made numerous trio recordings highlighting his piano performances that reveal more of his eclectic style that absorbed influences from various genres of jazz, popular and classical music. Please enjoy the link provided by Phatsak1: youtube/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nAxtgB0GGcY For more information on Oscar Peterson please contact us at: thehistoryofjazzmusic@gmail Visit The History of Jazz Music at: thehistoryofjazzmusic.ning/?xg_source=msg_mes_network
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 15:59:58 +0000
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