The World Says a Reluctant Goodbye to Oscar Peterson

The great Oscar Peterson was laid to rest today. Not knowing what to say that hasn't already been said I thought I'd just post a bit of a roundup of some of what is being said.

First from the family at OscarPeterson.com

A Message from Kelly & Celine Peterson:

We would like to thank everyone who has sent their condolences, and the hundreds of you who sent e-mail messages. We appreciate it very much. There will be a public memorial service in the near future, and we will provide all the details right here once everything has been decided. For anyone who would like to make donations, we ask you to please make them to World Vision or Christian Children's Fund in honour of Oscar Peterson. Thank you once again for all your love and support. May God Bless his Soul!

CBC Archives has posted a multimedia galleryof Peterson's work:

Oscar Peterson was a giant in every sense of the word. Standing well over 6 feet, he'd even been mistaken for a football player. But there's no mistaking his brilliance on the keyboard. His dazzling technique combined with his swinging style made the Montreal native, as one critic remarked, the best damn jazz pianist in the whole world.

From the Globe and Mail's arts section

Few pianists swung as hard or played as fast and with as many grace notes as Canada's Oscar Peterson. The classically trained musician could play it all, from Chopin and Liszt to blues, stride, boogie, bebop and beyond. He led his own jazz trios, performed with such legendary figures as Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, who called him "the man with four hands," recorded more than 200 albums and wrote such memorable works as Hymn to Freedom and the Canadiana Suite.

From blogto.com

I was lucky enough to have studied jazz at York University while Oscar Peterson was the school's chancellor. Even though our paths never crossed, his presence was almost palpable. I played in an ensemble under the tutelage of Don Thompson, a Canadian jazz giant in his our right, and every once in a while he'd make us put down our instruments and stop talking theory so we could listen to the masters. He'd play us records from his collection - Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, Bill Evans - but more often than not we'd find ourselves listening to Oscar Peterson.

From Drawn! the Illustration and Cartooning Blog

I just read that Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson died last night. In tribute, here’s Begone Dull Care, the groundbreaking abstract animated film from 1949 by Norman McLaren, featuring the music of the Oscar Peterson trio.

From Canoe

Throughout his career, Peterson was showered with accolades. 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.

From CityNews:

He was a man who tickled the ivories and audiences across the globe. He was a Canadian icon, a teacher, an eight-time Grammy winner and even one of the few Canucks with his face on a postage stamp. But to the world he could be summed up in just two words - "the best."

From the National Post

Considered by many to be one of the greatest piano players of all-time, Mr. Peterson was born in Montreal in 1925. He died at his home in Mississauga. His affair with piano spanned six decades, resulted in more than 200 recordings, and earned him seven Grammy Awards, and saw him named Down Beat magazine's best jazz pianist 13 Times.

From the Halifax Chronicle Herald.

The music was so powerful, so propulsively swinging that fellow musicians found it hard to believe Monday that such a force of nature as Oscar Peterson had finally been stilled.

From Vancouver Jazz

Oscar Peterson, Canada's most renowned and probably greatest jazz musician has died. For the last day or two I've received emails informing of Oscar's death, followed by emails reporting that these were unconfirmed rumours. This morning CBC News confirmed the worst.

Oscar Peterson Trio - A Gal In Gallico (1958)
with Ray Brown & Herb Ellis

From Canoe

Known for the propulsive swing of his music as well as his astounding technical virtuosity, the Montreal-born Peterson visited almost every major concert hall around the globe, recording some of the country's most distinctive music including "Canadiana Suite" and "Hymn to Freedom."

From the Montreal Gazette

Peterson, who last played the Montreal jazz festival in 2004 was named Down Beat magazine's best jazz pianist 13 times. Even though Peterson suffered from arthritis most of his life he routinely topped international jazz polls. His memory for notes and lyrics was photographic. He played with such soul it seemed the piano spoke.
"You can't just sit down and play the piano. You have to think of phrases, colours, intensities. That's the only way it can be," he said once, "I have to become the piano."

From What's On Winnipeg

The jazz community in Canada and at large was one member short this Christmas, but for some the death of Oscar Peterson felt more like an entire orchestra had been silenced instead of just one man.

From Reuters

One of jazz's most recorded musicians, both as leader and accompanist, Peterson rose from working-class beginnings in Montreal -- where his father let him pursue music only if he promised to be "the best" -- to become a major influence on generations of top-flight musicians

From Peace, Order and Good Government, eh?

Oscar Peterson died yesterday at age 82. As an artist and a man, he was a glorious citizen of Canada and the world. We remember with joy his life and his conversations with his piano.

Here is "Cubana Chant" from his 1964 concert in London

From the Australian

The technical brilliance, unprecedented speed and hard-driving swing of Peterson's best work inspired generations of artists. But it also drove them to despair, for they knew Peterson's feats could not be matched, much less topped.

From the Telegraph (UK)

In a career spanning more than half a century Peterson enjoyed celebrity, public acclaim and almost unqualified critical approval. The only sour note came from a few critics who, early in his career, suggested that the effortless fluency of his playing was a mark of glibness.

From the Wall Street Journal

For Peterson, who died on Sunday at age 82, his full mastery of the instrument enabled him to keep striving for what to him was his ultimate reason for being. In his equally masterful autobiography, "A Jazz Odyssey: The Life of Oscar Peterson" (Continuum, 2002), he said of the "dare-devil enterprise [the jazz experience]" in which he engaged for so many years that it "requires you to collect all your senses, emotions, physical strength and mental power, and focus them totally on the performance. . . every time you play. . . . Uniquely exciting, once it's bitten you, you never get rid of it. Nor do you want to; for you come to believe that if you get it all right, you will be capable of virtually anything. That is what drives me, and I know it always will do so."

From Pravda (Russia)

Oscar Peterson's dazzling keyboard technique, commanding sense of swing and mastery of different piano styles could leave even his most accomplished peers awe-struck. His death brought forth tributes from jazz pianists spanning the generations.

From the Los Angeles Times

Speed, endurance, articulation and imagination -- Peterson embodied them in one perpetually explosive package, and he made it look easy, as is evident in loads of clips on YouTube.

Oscar Peterson performing "Goodbye"