Peterson Oscar Emmanuel, *15 August 1925 Montreal, †23 December 2007 Mississauga, Canadian jazz pianist and composer. From the age of 6, he was learning to play the piano – first under the supervision of his father, then his sister Daisy, later a valued teacher, and the classical pianist P. de Marky; he mastered the rules of jazz on his own.
At the age of 14, he won a music competition in Montreal; since then, he appeared regularly on a local radio station. In 1944, he joined the J. Holmes orchestra. He began his worldwide career in 1949 with a performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall as part of the Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series by N. Granz. In the first half of the 1950s, he continued to collaborate with Granz, while developing his own trio, which soon gained critical and public acclaim. This band, after personnel changes, achieved its greatest success in 1953–58, playing in the following lineup: Peterson, H. Ellis (guitar) and R. Brown (double bass). During this period, the Peterson Trio also collaborated with, among others, L. Young, L. Armstrong, E. Fitzgerald, S. Getz, and B. Webster. In 1960, together with Brown, E. Thigpen and P. Nimmons, he founded the Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto (it operated for 3 years). In 1962, he recorded the album Affinity, which was a great success; in 1964, he collaborated with C. Terry (The Oscar Peterson Trio Plus One) and composed a Canadian Suite. In the early 1970s, he performed mainly as a soloist, in the middle of the decade he gave concerts with jazz stars: E. Fitzgerald (Ella and Oscar, 1976), C. Terry, D. Gillespie (Oscar Peterson and Dizzy Gillespie, 1974), C. Basie, R. Eldrige, S. Vaughan, N.-H. Oersted Pedersen and symphony orchestras. In the 1980s, he performed and recorded with S. Grappelli, J. Pass, and B. Carter, and also released many of his own albums, including A Royal Wedding Suite (1981). After 1992, due to health problems, he limited his concert activity.
Peterson is one of the most famous pianists in jazz history; he is one of the few who managed to achieve both artistic and commercial success (he is one of the record holders in terms of the number of albums released). His style, today considered eclectic, combines the most important achievements of classical jazz pianists: J.P. Johnson’s stride, F. Waller’s boogie-woogie, T. Wilson’s refined swing and the virtuosity of A. Tatum (with whom he was often compared). His playing was characterised by extraordinary technique, spontaneity of expression, energy and bravado, rare even in jazz. He used dense, often polyphonic textures, complex runs, arpeggios, sudden register changes, dynamic contrasts and doubling of tempo; his solo potential is best illustrated by the album My Favourite Instrument (1968). Peterson’s repertoire included jazz standards, music by C. Porter, Ellington, N. “King” Cole, Gershwin and his own compositions.
