Schema Magazine

R.I.P | Canada's own jazz legend Oscar Peterson

Sadly, one of the world's greatest jazz pianists, Montreal-reared OSCAR PETERSON, has died at age 82 at his home in Mississauga, Ontario. His illustrious career spans seven decades, where Peterson played with the biggest names in jazz, including Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie (who once said: "Oscar Peterson plays the best ivory box I've ever heard"), Duke Ellington (who referred to him as "Maharajah of the keyboard"), Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, and Ray Charles (who said in Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues - Piano Blues (2003): "Oscar Peterson is a mother fucking piano player!").

With a list of awards including Canada's Order of Canada, a Lifestime Grammy in 1997, the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the UNESCO Music Prize, and a spot in the International Jazz Hall of Fame, Oscar Peterson never stopped calling Canada home. In 2005 he became the first living person (other than a reigning monarch) to obtain a commemorative stamp in Canada, and across eastern Canada there are streets, squares, concert halls and schools named after him.

"A jazz player is an instant composer," Peterson once said in a CBC interview, while conceding jazz did not have the mass appeal of other musical genres. "You have to think about it, it's an intellectual form."

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