The legendary jazz piano virtuoso is the topic of this warmly celebratory if undemanding documentary, which takes us by way of his life and instances and in addition brings collectively jazz musicians to play a particular session in his honour. Peterson was a musician who performed and composed within the custom of Artwork Tatum, Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington; largely performing along with his personal trio, or later solo, which gave him a quasi-classical mien.
In contrast to these different greats, nevertheless, Peterson was from Canada, and as his pal Quincy Jones remarked: “I didn’t know they even had black folks in Canada!” In consequence, Peterson by no means grew up with Jim Crow segregation, of which there was no authorized equal in Canada – though racism and discrimination had been actually commonplace sufficient, and Peterson’s 1962 plangently emotional composition Hymn to Freedom, written for Martin Luther King Jr, grew to become an anthem for the civil rights motion.
This documentary makes use of some British TV archive footage from The Michael Parkinson Present, although watching this I couldn’t assist remembering one thing that the movie doesn’t explicitly allude to: within the Nineteen Seventies, Peterson himself introduced exhibits for the BBC: Oscar Peterson Invitations …, through which Peterson hosted different musicians and pianists, and Piano Celebration, through which his company included Rick Wakeman and, remarkably, former prime minister Edward Heath (Heath was a pupil of the piano and the clavichord, and gave a stately however completely first rate efficiency). These programmes could also be misplaced within the mists of time, however what number of different BBC programmes again then had been fronted by an individual of color? This can be a documentary that discreetly doesn't concern itself a lot with Peterson’s persona, and concentrates on the music, which is solely worthwhile.
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