MASTERS of the IVORIES

'IT'S A PLEASURE to meet you," says jazz giant Oscar Peterson with a warm smile as we sit for a rare interview between sets during his six-night run at Birdland that ended last Sunday. It was good to be put at ease.
As reclusive as he is legendary, Mr. Peterson is an artist whose amazing technical command and uncanny musical instincts have for decades instilled in other musicians the kind of awe and fear he expresses about his idol, the late Art Tatum (he once compared that piano master to a lion: an animal that scares you to death, but one you can't resist getting close enough to hear roar). Over a decade ago, however, Mr. Peterson suffered a stroke that debilitated his left hand and left him in a weakened condition. He has been battling his way back ever since.
It's an arduous challenge. The Oscar Peterson style has long been characterized by rapid, graceful, blues-tinged melodic lines unfurled in long, weaving phrases with the inexorable logic of an epic narrative; and--equally important--a visceral sense of rhythm, transmitted with fire and snap. These qualities for which he is renowned--effortless fluidity and clockwork precision--are not merely aspects of his playing. They are the very foundation on which his personal artistic expression rests. And pulling them off requires a high level of athletic prowess.
At the first set of his performance last Tuesday, the audience rightly erupted into a standing ovation as he entered the room. The pianist, who recently turned 81, needed help to mount the stage, but he had not even completely descended onto the piano stool when his hands shot to the keyboard and began playing. His quartet, featuring guitarist Ulf Wakenius, bassist David Young and drummer Alvin Queen, offered superb musical support. And for moments during that set, flashes of the old brilliance emerged, unscathed by the ravages of illness and time. Yet the physical struggle was also apparent.
Mr. Peterson has never been one to stop for roadblocks--and there have been many. Nevertheless, his current frustrations are formidable. We speak after the performance, and I mention that he is one of those special musicians whose sound is recognizable after hearing just a few notes. "Because they are all wrong?" he asks, with a laugh.
Given a limited amount of time, to allow Mr. Peterson some rest between sets, we concentrate on just a few subjects. One is his concern about the proper education of young musicians. Mr. Peterson was himself a high-school dropout (his father gave him permission to leave school only under the condition that he become the best at what he does). Yet he has innumerable honorary degrees to his credit, and he even created and ran a school of contemporary music for three years (which has since closed), in his native Canada.
Asked why so many young jazz musicians today, unlike the artists of his generation, seem unable to make a genuinely personal contribution to the tradition, he points to limitations in our culture and marketplace: "I'm not denigrating anybody," he says, "but of all the things being played on the air, there is not enough of 'our' kind of music. Young people are not getting the full spectrum. Many are not getting involved with classical music until they are much older. And needless to say that is also true of jazz. Budding musicians are not given time to develop. They simply follow what is popular, and it won't help them from a creative point of view."
His own early musical education was shaped in Montreal under the tutelage of a Hungarian teacher named Paul de Marky. There were the usual exercises and standard classical repertoire, which the young student practiced for up to 12 hours a day "when my mother didn't drag me off the stool," he reports. "Mr. de Marky was a very great pianist and teacher. What I loved about him was that he was not short-sighted. He was a fantastic classical pianist. But I would come to him for a lesson, and he'd be playing jazz records." It was his teacher's open-mindedness, he says, that allowed him to branch out.
At the age of 14, he won a national amateur contest sponsored by the Canadian Broadcasting Co. Three years later he began touring with the Johnny Holmes Orchestra, Montreal's most popular swing band. Before long he achieved recognition as an incredible boogie-woogie player, garnering the title "The Brown Bomber of Boogie-Woogie." "That was RCA Victor's idea, not mine," he says with a glint of anger. "They insisted that I do that. As for whatever name they gave me, I'm happy not to remember."
Yet it was the beginning of a real career. All the while, he studied the output of jazz piano greats like Teddy Wilson, Nat "King" Cole and Duke Ellington. "The first thing I did was to use them as my primary source of exercise, trying to emulate them as best I could. Their playing served as my rudiments. And then I heard Art Tatum and decided to retire," he states with a grin. "I still feel that way." Many other pianists do too, for good reason--Tatum displayed the kind of technique that left classical virtuosos like Vladimir Horowitz and Sergei Rachmaninoff with dropped jaws, and his harmonic explorations showed a sense of sophistication and adventure beyond anything being offered by his peers.
Young Oscar's understanding of harmony had already been developing in Paul de Marky's studio: "His library of recordings included Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson and others, thank God. He had a very broad insight into the music, and he passed it on to me."
What keys to success had he discovered in the playing of the greats? "There was one common denominator," he explains. "They respected the instrument. I never tried to sound like a trumpet or a clarinet. I was taught to respect it for what it was: a piano. And it spoke with a certain voice. And that was what I was determined to bring forward." That is, he was focused on becoming what is known as a "two-fisted player"--someone who utilizes the full potential of the instrument. The pianists he admires today have paid similar dues. He points to Benny Green and fellow Canadian Oliver Jones among them.
Recent reports tell of a group of young people riding by his home in Toronto and yelling racial epithets. Rumors had the pianist, who was recently honored with a Canadian postal stamp in his image, ready to move to the Caribbean. "I like to think it was just a bunch of hooligans," he now says with sadness. "I toured the South with Norman Granz, and I went through the hate campaign they had going down there. But when you come away from a nice party at a friend's house, and arrive home to hear those expletives--it makes me feel that my family is at risk. What have I done to deserve it?"
As for his current physical trials, he is most grateful for friends in the medical profession who look out for him. "They are very tuned into what I want to do, and they are not afraid to say, 'You'd better not try that.' And I listen to them. They don't play piano, and I'm not a doctor."
"And will you continue to plug away?" I ask, as the owner of Birdland, Gianni Valenti, informs me that time is up. "That's my medicine out there," Mr. Peterson replies, gesturing toward the stage. "It's the audience's medicine too," I offer in response. "Amen to that," he says.
Mr. Isacoff, editor of the magazine Piano Today, is the author of "Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization."