During an illustrious career spanning six decades, jazz piano virtuoso Oscar Peterson played with musicians as diverse as Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker and became one of the most recorded and honored jazz pianists of all time.
Peterson, 82, died of kidney failure Sunday at his home in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.
Peterson, a Canadian-born musical prodigy, recorded more than 200 albums and won eight Grammy Awards, including one for lifetime achievement in 1997.
Peterson showed technical and emotional brilliance across the jazz spectrum, from bop to blues, and his chief piano influences were astonishingly different -- Art Tatum, a master of jaw-droppingly fast swing, as well as Nat King Cole, the legendarily tender balladeer.
A critical appraisal of Peterson's work conveyed how deep his talents ran. Jazz reviewer Leonard Feather once wrote that Peterson “can extract the gentlest whimper, the profoundest roar or the deepest indigo wails from his keyboard." Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, said Monday, “Any pianist who came after Oscar Peterson would have had to look up to him as a model of all-around musicianship."
Peterson excelled in the trio format and had long musical relationships with bassist Ray Brown, guitarist Herb Ellis and drummer Ed Thigpen. As a soloist, he was sometimes criticized for following too closely in the “rococo" tradition of Tatum, who died in 1956. Peterson showed far more subtlety as an accompanist to such singers as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday as well as such horn players as Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, said Ira Gitler, a jazz historian and producer.
Peterson, 82, died of kidney failure Sunday at his home in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.
Peterson, a Canadian-born musical prodigy, recorded more than 200 albums and won eight Grammy Awards, including one for lifetime achievement in 1997.
Peterson showed technical and emotional brilliance across the jazz spectrum, from bop to blues, and his chief piano influences were astonishingly different -- Art Tatum, a master of jaw-droppingly fast swing, as well as Nat King Cole, the legendarily tender balladeer.
A critical appraisal of Peterson's work conveyed how deep his talents ran. Jazz reviewer Leonard Feather once wrote that Peterson “can extract the gentlest whimper, the profoundest roar or the deepest indigo wails from his keyboard." Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, said Monday, “Any pianist who came after Oscar Peterson would have had to look up to him as a model of all-around musicianship."
Peterson excelled in the trio format and had long musical relationships with bassist Ray Brown, guitarist Herb Ellis and drummer Ed Thigpen. As a soloist, he was sometimes criticized for following too closely in the “rococo" tradition of Tatum, who died in 1956. Peterson showed far more subtlety as an accompanist to such singers as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday as well as such horn players as Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, said Ira Gitler, a jazz historian and producer.
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