A hundred years he would have had this year. Oscar Peterson was celebrated in a grand way on Friday evening and a surprise awaited us: the 90-year-old pianist Oliver Jones was there for his childhood friend in the La Petite-Bourgogne district.
Céline Peterson, the daughter of the great Montreal jazz pianist who left us in 2007 at the age of 82, swept away by kidney failure, pointed the first on the scene of the symphonic house with these introductory words for the present audience.
“I am very moved by the centenary of my father’s birth here in Montreal. It is a great honor that our family gave us to the Montreal International Jazz Festival. »»
“The origin of the creation of this concert,” she continued, “started with a call from Maurin [Auxéméry, directeur de la programmation du festival]. He simply said to me: “Well, the hundredth anniversary is coming, what are we doing?” I knew that the festival would do things big with this evening. You know, my father exiled from Montreal for several years, but for him, in the bottom of his heart, he never left the house. »»
We immediately saw her on his face, it was really sincere. Céline and Oscar’s mother, Kelly Peterson, was also with us in the audience. The singer Ranee Lee too.
Oscar Peterson left Montreal in 1949 to play Carnegie Hall, recruited by Norman Granz from the Verve label. It is known, he was the house pianist of the prestigious jazz label.
His rich flights of notes, the dexterity of this fluid left hand, even after a stroke had resulted in partial paralysis, in 1993, mark the history of jazz.
On the program therefore, after a first part of the quartet: the Canadical suite Composed by the Montreal virtuoso in 1965. The press saw the said continuation with Peterson in the flesh and bone in the Wilfrid-Pelletier room-was it in 1984 or in 1989? The memory is blurred, it must be admitted. What we remember, on the other hand, during his concerts at the Jazz Festival is his immense handkerchief that he used to go out the face after each piece.
Canada, from one ocean to another
The Canadical suite was designed to make us travel in eight distinct places of Canada with the images and sensations of the places visited in music notes. We spot Laurentide Waltz and of course Place St. Henri With its slowness of the slow tempo, the coolest of the pianist with his interpretation of the classic Night Train In 1963.
The Centennial Orchestra was therefore presented by his daughter in the second half of the program. Each in turn, she announces the cream of our Montreal jazz musicians: Rachel Therrien and Jocelyn Couture with the trumpet, Christine Jensen in the saxophone, Jennifer Bell and Frank Lozano in the saxophones, the veteran Muhammad Abdul al-Khabyyr au trombone, some of the 14 musicians who formed the section of the brass, in addition to a rhythmic section, Guitar, double bass, drums and piano, under the direction of John Clayton.
Hogtown Blues received nourished applause, the power of the brass, especially in acute notes, has obviously delighted the spectators.
The Montreal International Jazz Festival created in 1990 the Oscar-Peterson Prize given to a Canadian artist who made his mark with jazz, and Friday evening, another beautiful moment, inéméry arrived at the end of the program to put the heavy statuette to this year, the Montreal drummer Jim Doxas.
Photo provided by the fijm
Oscar Peterson and Oliver Jones at the Montreal International Jazz Festival in 1989
Oliver came to close the evening to play Hymn to Freedoma work which relates racial segregation in the United States, composed in 1962. A final in the rules of the art, the script was perfect. The concert ended at 9:30 p.m.
In order to underline the birthday, the festival has put a vinyl album entitled on sale Oscar Peterson Live at the Festival international de jazz de Montréalonly offered in souvenirs on the site.
If Leonard Cohen also made us proud to be Montrealer, Oscar Peterson gives off the same aura, in the firmament of musicians from the metropolis. Sacred evening!
