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After the official ceremonies, the speeches, the refreshments and the hoopla, Oscar sat down to play.
And time must have stood still for those privileged enough to hear the best jazz pianist in the world, if not the best in the world, fooling around with the brand new gift of a Yamaha Canada clavinova that he'd brought along to the opening ceremonies of the building that bears his name.
“He was like a kid with a toy,” says Dave Shackleton, a teacher at Oscar Peterson Public School in Churchill Meadows, whose wife hauled him back into the gym when she saw that OP was going to test the limits of the most up-to-date electric piano on the market.
The staff and the stragglers who hung around long enough got to see their own little private concert.
The clavinova not only is a digital piano, but it can replicate the sounds of acoustic instruments with eerie accuracy.
“It's three-quarters of the size of a baby grand,” said Shackleton. “When Dr. Peterson was playing it and he hit the button for flute, if you closed your eyes, you'd think someone was playing the flute. It sounded acoustically correct.”
The member of more music halls of fame than you can shake a drum stick at, Peterson has a long fascination with electronic keyboards.
“When he started to play with the upright bass on his own, it was like the rest of us weren't there,” said Shackleton, who has taught in Peel for five years but knows of Peterson's world-wide popularity from stints teaching in England, Korea and Japan as well.
Wouldn't be surprised if OP was thinking of his beloved long-time late bassists Ray Brown and Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, whom he's called, “the two best bass players in jazz.”
“At (almost) 81, he has tremendously long fingers that just fly when he's doing that impromptu stuff,” said Shackleton. “I can just imagine what he must have been like when he was young and in his prime, cause he's still the best.”
When the Peel District School Board appointed Caroline Mochrie of Sheridan Park Public School to be principal at the new school in Churchill Meadows and decided to make it a “music school,” Ward 9 Trustee Sue McFadden had the perfect name in mind.
As it turned out, the school didn't just get a name, it got a mentor of the highest order.
The good doctor (16 honourary degrees and counting) has provided better treatment than they could have ever imagined.
“Oscar and his wife Kelly are involved in the school at every level from concerts to reading with children,” says McFadden.
“His participation in the school music program has been the turning point for so many children at the school. We have certainly noticed that no matter what language the children speak or where they originate from, they all speak the same language when it comes to music.”
As biographer Gene Lees put it in the title of his book (and the title of an OP album), Peterson has “The Will to Swing.” He also has a long memory and remembers how music changed the life of an immigrant family with five children who settled in St. Henri in Montreal, where he was born in 1925.
After the school was named for him, Peterson admitted that the honour catered to his two greatest weaknesses, the piano and children.
“I fully intend to make every attempt (itinerary permitting) to be there personally and musically for these wonderful youngsters that are hopefully entering not only the educational phase of their lives, but also the musical segment of that phase,” he said in his online journal. “This I am proud to publicly acclaim and intend to carry out my promise.”
So far, so fantastic.