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Legendary Jazz Pianist Oscar Peterson Celebrates 75th Birthday

As his many awards, including the recent UNESCO award granted by the United Nation’s cultural body, and his many fans attest, Oscar Peterson is a legend in its own right. His first big break took place in 1949 when he won a talent show and was given the opportunity to perform on a local radio station in Montreal. A hot-shot New York concert producer named Norman Granz heard Peterson perform and the rest is history. But what of the present and future?

Digital Journal.com spoke with Dr. Oscar Peterson about his view of the main differences between playing jazz today in the age of technology and the Internet and playing jazz throughout the rest of his career.

Digital Journal.com: What is your new multimedia CD-ROM and what inspired you to create it?

Oscar Peterson: It’s been out for three months. So far the response has been great. It’s a very specialized item because it has so many things in it. It has biographical material; it has some video clips from performances. Also it has, needless to say, some of my compositions. For people who want to find out what I played, they can follow the piano keyboard up at the top of the screen, which follows whatever is being played on the piano at the time. When you play those selections you can change the tempo and you can change the key. It has a complete discography, which is a huge project for me and it also has all kinds of photos and stories of my record dates with Alan and with different people. Along with it is book called Note by Note in which eighteen of my solos have been copied out note for note and they can actually read them directly from the book. It took an awful lot of work it really did just the photographs alone – to trace the people who had done these photographs and to get the clearance took a long time. The whole project took over four years to complete.

The project was an idea from a gentleman by the name of Lance Anderson along with John Gittins who started the jazz program at York University. We all collaborated to get things done.

Digital Journal.com: York University’s jazz programme is regarded as one of the best jazz faculties anywhere. What do you think of the programme?

Oscar Peterson: The jazz programme has gotten some awfully good write-ups. Keyboard Magazine and Downbeat and several of the other magazines all think that it really should be – and possibly will be – incorporated into the education system musically, which it probably will be, but I’m not certain of that.

Digital Journal.com: How have you incorporated technology in your career?

Oscar Peterson: I use it in various capacities. I use it first and foremost in some of my musical activities: writing and composing. A lot of the instruments I use are obviously digital. I use it for digital sound, for recordings and for musical dictation.

I am an acoustical person and I still love playing my acoustic piano. The other factions served to augment that from an orchestral standpoint, but I think that there is definitely a place for digital music when used properly. I wouldn’t like to see it supplant the musician so I try to keep everything as humane as possible, let’s put it that way.

Digital Journal.com: How has the Internet affected your life and career?

Oscar Peterson: I am a Web addict. I have a Web site [www.oscarpeterson.com]. Again, I am trying to keep it humane with the human touch. I have the journal where I am trying to keep any followers of mine apprised of what I am doing and what I have been doing, expressing some of my musical opinions, so there is a dialogue there.

I love to surf the Web. Most of the instruments that I own were originally investigated on the Web. A couple of them were bought from the Internet.

Digital Journal.com: I have heard that you are a camera enthusiast. Do some of the products you have investigated and purchased from the Internet include cameras?

Oscar Peterson: Photography has always been a love of mine. I am into the digital aspect of cameras and I use several cameras and digital cameras. It supplants the dark room; it’s an immediate dark room. When time is of the essence, that answers the question. You also don’t have to carry around boxes of film all the time, you have little cards that you just stick into the camera that allow you to do what you have to do.

Digital Journal.com: Do you have a vast collection of digital images?

Oscar Peterson: Yes, I do have a lot of images. I use the cameras whenever I can. It’s kind of difficult because if I am out in public, usually people are asking me for something rather than me being able to shoot freely sometimes. But when I have time I like to go out. I wander around on my scooter and take my camera with me.

I have always been a camera addict. I used to carry suitcases of stuff. I even carried a darkroom at one point on the road with me. It’s a necessity.

I will be putting some of my pictures on the Web to illustrate what I am talking about. For me there’s nothing more relaxing. I love photographing people, their moods and reactions.


Oscar Peterson with his wife Kelly in a tender moment.


Digital Journal.com: Many people remember what they were doing when they learned John F. Kennedy had been shot because of the significance that this President had on society. The Internet impacts people’s lives in different, yet equally significant ways. Do you recall where you were when you first discovered the Web?

Oscar Peterson: A couple of friends of mine had computers, and I was at somebody’s house one day and they called up the Internet and I said, “What is that?” and they went through it with me and of course I was hooked immediately and then I had to go get Netscape.

I think it’s the best information source I know and the beautiful part is that if I have questions about anything, I can just use the Internet and get immediate answers. Otherwise, you can’t get answers that fast because you have to call up people or if you don’t do that you have to look into books upon books. With the Internet, you can just go to the subject and get some kind of answers, which I like.

E-mail is wonderful because it is so instant. I am not the greatest letter writer in the world, but I usually try to respond right away. I had a young pianist e-mail me two days ago, Makoto Ozone, whose a tremendous pianist from Japan and who did an interview with me. I didn’t know he had a Web site and he had been to mine so he suggested that we link and I said great.

Digital Journal.com: Napster and the current controversy over the ownership of digital music in the form of MP3’s has been a burning issue between music industry representatives, some musicians and music listeners. What is your view of music on the Internet being transferred without the control of the music industry?

Oscar Peterson: I think MP3s are a revolt against record companies. I am all in favour of it. I think that they are too complacent right now. They are so concerned with the monetary aspect that they are forgetting the artistic aspect of it. My ex-manager Norman Granz said it once years ago before he retired. He said that it would end up being two or three record companies. He thought that it would be a monopoly and he was right.

I know some of my future efforts will be done here [at my home studio], not through a record company. The control is much better. You don’t have to worry about what they will do with the recording or publicity wise – you can handle it all. It is instant access to the public. If you want to have your record recognized and played, it’s the easiest way.

I don’t blame [Napster] though. Why should we only go down one road? There is too much out there to only go down one road with one type of music. It’s crazy.

Digital Journal.com: There is a music revolution taking place now.

Oscar Peterson: And I’m all for it. It’s another way for the public to gain a more personal relationship with an artist if it comes out of the artist’s hands totally.

Record companies are not interested in that kind of social contact. They are just interested in sales.

Digital Journal.com: We find your response quite revealing because we would expect that you would say that as an artist, you need to protect yor work so you don’t want anyone to be able to just steal yor work.

Oscar Peterson: Do you know the One-of-a-Kind Art Show [in Toronto]? I go there every time I can because I think that that is what I am talking about. Artists have the chance to display their own talents and wares the way they want them displayed. There always seems to be a few people with CDs for sale that they’ve made and I support this. It’s direct contact with the artists themselves who say, “This is my product, this is what I did, this is what I worked on at this time.” And they want you to know that at that time and I support that. You can’t get this kind of contact through a record label.

DigitalJourna.com: You have your own label and you have complete control over your creative work and integrity. How do your friends who are controlled by the record companies and those big labels feel?

Oscar Peterson: They feel the same way because every artist has a vision. When you make an album for a record company there are too many things in between your initial input and the final output. There’s repertoire. Record companies sometimes try to intervene on what your repertoire is going to be. Then there’s the matter of the recording of the sound. Everyone has a different aspect as to how your own group should sound and this way you can control it all. I know a little bit about recording because I have been dabbling with it in this medium for quite a few years now. And I know how I want to sound.

I made a record, one tune with my bassist, Niels Pedersen from Denmark. He asked me to do this one little Danish tune. The piano had one of the finest sounds I’ve heard on a record and you can’t get that usually as you have too many people in between. There are eighteen engineers and one says do it this way and the other says you concentrate on that. Then they separate you in the record studio and you can’t hear your group. You don’t work like that on stage. When I work on stage my bassist is beside me and my drummer is right behind and my guitarist is right next to him. In a record studio, they put up the walls; you’re over here and the drummer is in an apartment somewhere else. You don’t have to do that. You lose communication.

I am very excited about the Internet because I think it’s going to free many many artists from the captivity of money grabbers.

I think any information you have access to is enlightening, not evil. You can still have all kinds of legal controls as long as they can hear you.

DigitalJournal.com: The latest news is that record companies will be selling music over the Internet after all.

Oscar Peterson: There’s no other way to go. You go the truthful way and you do what you have to do and what is the honest way. There’s a lady in Chicago, Audrey Genovese – she is a very wonderful vocalist. We’ve been friends for years and she has always sold her records out of her home and she still does. She does what she wants to do and she sells them. I admire that.

I love individual effort. I like to know the individual.

The record companies are too materialistic. There’s a story going around that there is a songwriter who wrote a song and wanted it on a particular vocalist’s album and to get in on that album it would cost him $365,000. But what does that tell him about the context of his song? Don’t they care about how good it is or how bad it is? It’s sell, sell, sell. I think that if this was the case many years ago, there may not be classical music and that is a frightening thought.

I have been very fortunate because over the years, because of my successes, I have been able to walk a pretty straight line to do what I want to do. People are forced to venture into other media because they want to get on the label. What about the artistic end of it? Where does that fit? I want to do something because I really want to do it. I don’t do something because I think it will sell 30 billion albums. I couldn’t care less. If it sells one, it sells one.

Digital Journal.com: Being a Canadian artist, are there any specific Canadian challenges that you have faced?

Oscar Peterson: I just finished one: “Trail of Dreams” [DigitalJournal.com – go to the rapid access, article #88]. Playing the music for that was quite a challenge. Those are the kinds of projects you talk about and you go to the record companies who say, “Well I don’t know.” It’s always the dollar sign instead of the musical clef. It doesn’t make sense.

Digital Journal.com: What are you working on presently?

I am working on a new project which is a departure for me. We just started so there is a long way to go. When it is complete, I want to be able to express what I did in my own words and then let the listeners judge for themselves.

Digital Journal.com: Thanks so much for talking to us. Happy Birthday to a real legend – the truly original, one and only you!

An Interview By: Rosemarie Godina and Janusz J. UiberallPhotograhy: Janusz J. Uiberall

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