Oscar Peterson

Peterson in 1977

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson CC CQ OOnt (August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. Peterson released more than 200 recordings, won eight Grammy Awards between 1975 and 1997, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy. In a career lasting more than half-a-century, he was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington and informally in the jazz community, "the King of inside swing".

Quotes about Oscar Peterson

• When Oscar Peterson died, he received the kind of multi-column obituaries that are usually reserved for star entertainers, not jazz musicians. But he was a special sort of jazzman, a pianistic phenomenon who spent his long career bestriding mainstream culture, equally at home in a club as the Albert Hall.
  • Geoffrey Smith "Jazz pianists ranked: these are jazz's 15 greatest magicians of the piano", BBC Music Magazine (Classical Music website, December 3, 2024).

• The most obvious key to his renown was his amazing technique, an awesome facility rare in jazz, but which Peterson simply regarded as a measure of sincerity. As he once put it, "the whole idea of jazz is that if you think of a phrase, you should be able to play it". He had no patience with half-articulated fumbling, and his racing mind was matched by his flying fingers.
  • Geoffrey Smith "Jazz pianists ranked: these are jazz's 15 greatest magicians of the piano", BBC Music Magazine (Classical Music website, December 3, 2024).

• The pianist did have his detractors, who resented his accomplishment: for some, his cascades of notes seemed superficial, compared to the craggy directness of, say, Thelonious Monk. But his accomplishment was real, an authentic expression of his love of jazz and performance. He was a great communicator, and his sense of joy as well as his gifts earned him an audience of millions, and the respect and admiration of his peers.
  • Geoffrey Smith of BBC Music (December 3, 2024) [1]

• As Peterson shakes the piano with a chorus of thundering, double-fisted tremolos, you may think, ‘well yes, this might just be the way Liszt would play jazz’.
  • Geoffrey Smith of BBC Music (December 3, 2024) [2]