Robi Botos opened his three-song set last night with a stirring version of There Is No Greater Love.
It was prescient on several levels. There is no greater love, or respect, than Botos (pronounced Botosh) has personally for any other pianist, living or dead, than he has for Oscar Peterson. That’s why he wanted so much to be part of the tribute concert.
It was evident from the disappointed reaction of the audience at Oscar Peterson Public School when it was finally confirmed for certain that Peterson was too ill to attend, that they hold him in the highest esteem as well.
And if any further proof were necessary, you could just refer to the remarkable souvenir program produced for the event, where students paid tribute to their school mentor.
“Oscar Peterson music makes me feel alive, awake and energized,” wrote Mitchell Clark in one of the series of student comments. “It makes me feel like I want to fly higher than the birds, like a plane.”
Now that kid knows his music.
Botos was hoping, naturally, that the man whose jazz playing he has admired since he was a child in Hungary would be there to listen. He especially wanted to play a song he has written in the Peterson style called Things Are Gonna Change.
Before the concert, the 28-year-old was visibly excited at the prospect of playing for the legend.
“Since I was a child I have been listening to Oscar Peterson,” said the Toronto resident, whose father was a musician. “He was one of the early influences on my music. He is the most brilliant jazz pianist ever and this is an unexplainable honour.”
Botos and brother Frank on drums and Attila Darvas on bass (in the same format as the classic Peterson-Ed Thigpen-Ray Brown trio), took us wandering through a woodlot on Autumn Leaves (you could almost feel the crunch beneath your feet) and finished up with the bluesy Billie’s Bounce, one of OP’s favourites.
Robi, who won the solo piano competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2004 and then opened for Peterson a year later in one of his career highlights, looked distracted after the concert. He was explaining why, “no one swings better than Oscar” when he suddenly stopped and started listening. “Man, they shouldn’t be doing that,” he said. Through the PA system, the old OP trio was playing and Botos was shaking his head in amazement and admiration.
The school staged another remarkable concert, like the gala last year where Peterson played himself.
Shannon Butcher, who once again opened with her trio, really liked the multicultural twist of this year’s program which featured Jonno Lightstone on clarinet and Jordan Klapman of the Klezmer Swingtet, Tasa featuring Ravi Naimpally on tablas and the irrepressible Heather Bambrick.
Bambrick managed to work a thank you to the school’s Grade 1s, who had led everyone earlier in the Chugga-Chugga song, by adding a line to the Irving Berlin classic. At Peterson Public School, it seems, they dance the Chugga Chugga Cheek to Cheek.
You’d think at an arts public school in Mississauga, someone would have mentioned all the alumnae of the Cawthra Park program who participated. They included Butcher, who was in fine voice (her CD is still in the works), drummer Dave MacDougall and Ross MacIntyre on bass. McIntyre, who contributed a lovely lush solo on East of the Sun, is a former Tecumseh Public School student who benefited greatly from the advice of another Mississaugan, Pat Collins, with whom he studied while in Grade 9 at Cawthra.
MacIntyre also has a faint Peterson connection.
He once had a lesson with the amazing Ray Brown. Is he a big fan? “Everybody is a big fan of Ray Brown,” he says.
And, it should be said, of his leader as well. Even if he’s not there in person to accept the accolades.