The legendary Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson died Sunday
night at age of 82, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
The report said Peterson, one of the most popular jazz artists
in history, died from kidney failure at his home in Mississauga,
Ontario, outside Toronto.
He was renowned for his lightning speed and dexterity at the
keyboard and played with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Ella
Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington during his 60-year career. Although
he suffered a stroke in 1993, he still continued to perform with
limited use of his left hand.
"He often seems to be a pianist who happens to play jazz rather
than a jazz musician who happens to play the piano," critic Mark
Miller wrote. "He celebrates the instrument."
The Montreal native made more than 200 albums and won seven
Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievement honor in 1997. He
also won more Downbeat magazine popularity polls than any other
pianist, according to the report.
In his home country, Peterson also received many honors,
including the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for lifetime
achievement in 1992. He also was made a Companion of the Order of
Canada, the nation's highest civilian award.
Peterson was born in August 1925 to a railway porter father from
the West Indies who was a talented amateur pianist.
He began taking classical piano lessons when he was 6 and won a
talent show at 14 on a Montreal radio station.
Peterson, afterwards, dropped out of school and played on a
weekly jazz program before hitting the hotels and music halls of
Montreal.
In 1943 he became the first black musician to play in a dance
music orchestra in Montreal.
Peterson's international career got off to a sensational start
when he played with well-established stars at New York's Carnegie
Hall in 1949 at the invitation of impresario Norman Granz, who
became his manager.
Peterson formed his first band in 1951 and a later trio with
Herb Ellis and Ray Brown, which was cited by aficionados as one of
the world's finest jazz groups.
He regularly toured European clubs and concert halls, often
accompanied by the stellar voice of Ella Fitzgerald. "It makes you
want to sing," Fitzgerald, who died in 1996, remarked of Peterson's
piano playing.
Peterson married four times and had six children from his first
and third marriages.
(Agencies via Xinhua News Agency December 25, 2007)
