Between the holidays and the preparations for the tour, there's little time to blog and so I am rather late with this, but I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention the passing of the lion of Canadian jazz musicians. Everyone knows his chops were fearsome, but I always greatly preferred relaxed, swinging Oscar to The School of Velocity Oscar. He sounded his best when he played like he didn't have anything to prove.
There's a lot of of Oscar on YouTube, but this clip from 1958 is the best:
Don't miss David Ryshpan's post, J.D. Considine's Globe and Mail obit (though his list of "players whose ideas were stronger than their technique" is perplexing), and Richard Severo's piece in the NYT -- the accompanying photo is hard to look at, but speaks to Oscar's tenacity -- he continued to practice his art until the very end.
"To some extent, he was a victim of fashion, as the most celebrated pianists of the mid-1950s and '60s were players whose ideas were considerably stronger than their technique: Dave Brubeck, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea. Even those whose playing flirted with virtuosity, such as Keith Jarrett or Cecil Taylor, seldom dazzled as Peterson did.
In short, Peterson had the misfortune of being a musical moderate at a time when all the big noise was being made by radicals and rebels."
Perplexing indeed - I've never heard anyone fault the technique of Evans, Tyner or Corea. Also, I wonder if there was ever a time when "all the big noise" was made by "moderates."
Posted by: mwanji | 30 December 2007 at 05:09 PM