Search - Oscar Peterson :: Perfect Peterson: The Best of the Pablo and Telarc Recordings

Perfect -- in every way!

Mark Blackburn | Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada | 02/24/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"When jazz fans yet unborn debate questions like, "Who was the greatest jazz pianist, Bill Evans or Oscar Peterson?" I believe the contents of this CD will be offered as Exhibit A in making the case for Peterson.



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In May 1993, Oscar Peterson was dazzling the paying customers at New York City's "Blue Note" when he suffered a stroke. In the aftermath, it looked to be a career-ending disability -- the dexterity of Oscar's legendary, left hand had vanished.



But ten years later (in his mid-seventies) the pianist/composer was on tour again seemingly "good as new" - and wowing audiences in places like Japan. The night he performed in Osaka (a city with nearly the population of Canada,) my youngest son "Ben" (then teaching English and falling in love with his future bride) was in the audience, watching in starry-eyed wonder!



Ben had longed to see Oscar "live" (and was envious of his parents, who'd witnessed Oscar `alone together,' 20 years earlier, with guitar legend Joe Pass).



So . . . having been denied the pleasure of seeing his musical hero "in person" here in Canada, Ben was beside himself with joy -- as he described the concert by phone 12,000 miles away, next day. "I was the only `westerner,' in a sea of Japanese faces," he said, "and almost the first thing he played was WHEATLAND!!! I think he looked my way and smiled, as he introduced it!"



Well, Ben will be enthralled with the 9 minute "Wheatland" included here - the finest "live" rendition of this musical portrait of Canada's Midwest, featuring Oscar's best-ever trio alumni -- Herb Ellis on guitar; Ray Brown - bass, and Bobby Durham -- drums .



Prediction: This latest (2007) 150 minute, double-CD package will be considered, decades hence, "the very best" compilation of Oscar Peterson's work.



Lovingly-crafted by producer Nick Phillips, (re-mastered in 2006 by Joe Tarantino at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley) the attractive package includes a delightful 20-page booklet with - I believe -- the most beautifully-written informative liner notes for any album by Oscar (and there are several hundred of his CDs listed here at Amazon.com).



Living up to its billing as "the best of the Pablo and Telarc recordings" - the 22 tracks range from an earliest live performance of "Tenderly" (Tokyo, 1953) . . . to an Art Tatum inspired, fast-as-humanly-possible, solo performance of "Back Home Again in Indiana," (Montreux Jazz Festival 1977) . . . concluding with an April 2000 performance of "Morning in Newfoundland," (from Oscar's "Trail of Dreams: A Canadian Suite").



This CD was sitting in the mailbox when I got home this evening, and I couldn't wait to hear what I was certain would be my favorite track - Django Reinhardt's "Nuages."



Until now I'd not heard Oscar's take on this, the best song of many written by the most influential, early jazz guitarist: Composed more than 60 years ago, "Nuages" acquired new life last year, thanks to a beautiful new lyric, written by Tony Bennett -- for his (2006) Grammy-winning "Art of Romance." (Please see reviews for that CD.)



Recorded live at Denmark's Tivoli Concert Hall (July 6, 1979) it's impossible to imagine a better jazz treatment of this great song. I'd intended to write some thoughts about just this one track . . . until I read the liner notes by James Isaacs (who composed, I think, the best liner notes ever written for Frank Sinatra - the "Great Songs from Great Britain," and "I Remember Tommy" CDs).



Mr. Isaacs' take on the incomparable "Nuages" performance heard here:



"And speaking of grandmasters, the French violinist Stephane Grappelli joined the Peterson quartet for the poignant "Nuages" (Clouds) - recorded before an enraptured audience on a summer's night in Copenhagen.



"Grappelli had played this haunting theme countless times, going back to the 1940s when he shared the front line in the Quintet of the Hot Club of France with the legendary guitarist (and composer).



"Joe Pass offers an introduction that is, by turns richly chordal and arpegiated; he evokes memories of Reinhardt without using the vibrato that was among the Belgian gypsy's calling cards. Then Grappelli enters magisterially, his tone golden, embarking upon the first of two rhapsodic solos.



"Peterson's unaccompanied, meditative rubato spot sets the stage for the violinist's return, and it is among the highlights in a career filled with them. The cadenza with its gypsy-like double and triple stops, is particularly ravishing."

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