Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla Master Zakir Hussain, 73, Succumbs to Illness
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
If Art Tatum was the “God” of the jazz piano, then his protege, Oscar Peterson, was his only-begotten son. Peterson died of kidney failure Sunday at his home in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga. He was 82.
From the time of his emergence in the early ‘40s, Peterson’s classically trained and blues-hued brilliance set the standard for jazz piano excellence. He was born to Jamaican immigrant parents in Montreal on Aug. 15, 1925. His classical studies started when he was 6, and eight years later he won a local talent competition. He went on to appear regularly on a Montreal radio station with the Johnny Holmes Orchestra. When Norman Granz heard Peterson, the young pianist had amalgamated the styles of Tatum, Erroll Garner and Nat “King” Cole. Impressed by his talent, Granz featured him in Carnegie Hall in his Jazz At The Philharmonic concerts and he signed him to his Verve record label. With an instrumentation that featured bass, guitar and piano, Peterson formed a popular trio with Ray Brown and Herb Ellis in the 1950s.
Later, drummer Ed Thigpen would be added and the combo worked steadily for the next two decades. His tribute to his homeland, The Canadian Suite was nominated for a Grammy in 1965, and his nod to Cole, With Respect To Nat, is one of his best loved recordings. He also recorded with Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie, among numerous collaborations.
In addition to the trio, Peterson performed and recorded in a number of configurations from solo piano to orchestral, always setting the keyboard standard.
In 1984, Peterson was elected by the Readers into the Down Beat Hall of Fame.
“Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.
Dec 17, 2024 9:58 AM
Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide…
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
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Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.
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Cuban-American jazz trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval and Harlem’s Apollo Theater were among the honorees at the 2024…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
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Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
