The Genii Forum

For us, dexterity brings thoughts of finger-flinging. To the greater world, however, dexterity and music frequently brought to mind Oscar Peterson, one of the greatest jazz pianists who ever lived.

He died Sunday at age 82. Perhaps Mike Close, a fine pianist himself and a fan of Oscar's, will explain a bit about what made him great.

I saw Peterson play at least four times when living in New York--it was an amazing experience.
This from the Globe and Mail in Canada:

Click here to read the obit.

Sad news indeed. For many years I used a track of his "Portrait of Frank Sinatra" album as my walk on music.

A friend of mine, who was one of the top pianists anywhere, said of peterson, "We never could see his extra hands... he had to have had more than 10 fingers."

Nooooo! One of Canada's Greatest. Sad sad news indeed. He will always be remenbered here in Canada, and around the world. Goodby Oscar, your music will live forever. Robert.

I come out of long-lurk mode to chime in on this.

The Christmas season is the time when I hear the music of my OTHER piano hero, Vince Guaraldi, all over the airways.

But Oscar Peterson was my piano hero even before Vince. I always wanted to meet him to see what a guy with twelve fingers looked like.

But not only was he a virtuoso, he was also one of the most musical jazz players of the 20th century. He will be sorely missed.

being the 7th great pianist in the world
i can tell you what made him great.

later though, i gotta make dad supper.

Man I hadn't heard this yet. Oscar was one of the best. His album Night Train is always in heavy rotation on my iPod. I urge everyone to check it out. He got his start in Canada playing with my idol, Maynard Ferguson who we lost last year. It's so sad when we lose all the masters.

Top this lineup, fraters!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ayQq5AQxF0

R.I.P., Oscar.

P.S. Bravo! VIVA San Francisco's own Vince Guaraldi!! :whack:

to understand the physical and psychological
aspects of technical and creative combined.
one needs to submersed itself into the music,
that is irrelevant to rules and carve something
out of nothing to make it special.

from a mostly self-taught (2 years of lessons only) classically trained background, to take
music and make it come alive for new ears
is a very difficult task in itself.

Jazz is not my forte, but my first exposure to
him was in my music theory I class my freshman
year of college. Jazz is an acquired taste,
and sometimes for us who are taught in a
strict code of classicalism, it is not easy
to sway the tempo to a different drummer.

I heard his version of "somewhere over the rainbow", the improvisation aspect was an
education to my ears.

I for one can not play jazz like oscar, but
i was taught something more important.
How to move an audience. Maybe not in jazz
but in my own genre I created.

Its not just dexterity. It does play a major role
of how our fingers moving over the keys. But its more than that. Its our touch velocity. the music that we want to make from the instrument. The
manipulation of making the music change from the instrument. Our inner timing. the connection of
what we hear in our heads when we play, to come
out the same exact way, for he listener listen.

Oscar definitely did that with jazz.

My favourite pianist of all time - RIP

I'll be listening to a few of his LPs today

Dave

I can't imagine my musical education without Oscar; no one could jazz it up like he could. His "Encore At The Blue Note" is still of my all-time favorite albums.

A friend of mine is taking me to see McCoy Tyner on Thursday. I wouldn't be surprised if a tribute were in the works.

I'm playing a minor blues in his honor...

I grew up listening to Oscar Peterson and saw him in concert many times - starting in 1962 when he came to Purdue University and including years later at the Los Angeles Music Center where he appeared with Joe Pass, Ella Fitzgerald and the Count Basie Orchestra. (Now there was a night!) I have all of his recordings. I have only to listen to him play, and every problem and concern melts away. One night over dinner I asked my mother, now eighty-five and still playing the piano, what music means to her. She could well have had Oscar Peterson in mind when she said: "It means everything to me. It's therapy. It's pleasure. It puts me into another world. It's the accomplishment. Something you can do by yourself. It works on the imagination. It's a deep feeling, Music reaches so deep that I can't explain." If you haven't done so already, you will want to read Peterson's autobiography, A JAZZ ODYSSEY (Continuum, 2002). It's all there - his career, his philosophy, his inner world. As Tchaikovsky once said,"Music washes away the dust of the soul." Or as my grandfather (who played cornet and piano) used to say, "I can no more imagine a world without music than I can imagine a world without love."

Sad news indeed.

Here's another sad fan. Saw him play at the Ronnie Scott's in London. The same week "with friends" at the Royal Festival Hall and one of the friends was Joe Pass. I use one of his tracks for one of the very few tricks I perform with music.

This is a great loss. My wife and I always played his wopnderful Christmas album at this time of year; it's one of our favorites.

Matt Field

That is very sad news, indeed.

His work was more than special. Even if you could play all the notes, you couldn't play them like Oscar.

I was turned on to this site this Summer, but it seems everywhere I go , someone tells me about this site...hated to say "Oh yeah, been listening since August"...but maybe this is a site you haven't yet heard of...Pandora radio. Just type in who you would like to hear, and they play it for 4 or 5 hours.