Oscar Peterson belonged to the world, we were reminded again last night at a tribute concert in his honour, but he also belonged very much to Mississauga.
So on the one hand we had his friend of more than 70 years, pianist Oliver Jones, explain to us how he has learned, in his wide travels since Oscar died, the profound way in which so very many people have been touched by his passing and his legacy.
On the other we had Oscar Peterson Public School student Anjali Bhogal recall in a poem how the school's namesake brought laughter and candy canes into the Churchill Meadows building at Christmas time: "You wore a Santa hat/ And we all remember that."
The Mayor's Valentine Tribute to Oscar began with Bhogal walking to centre stage where a spotlight highlighted a Bosendorfer piano, with a conspicuously empty stool. She placed a bouquet there for the absent master.
We had Sophie Milman, a young jazz singing sensation just coming into her own at age 25 remembering the Oscar Peterson records, with labels in Russian, that she used to hear in her native country before she moved to Israel and then, reluctantly, to Canada at age 16. She wasn't sure about her new country until her father took her to see a Peterson concert. Then she concluded, "it was worth moving to this country just to hear that."
Then, before you could say Jazz Razzmatazz, we had the Oscar Peterson students, under the direction of teachers Kirsten Fielding and Marion Roy, snapping their fingers and shuffling their feet in rhythmic waves reminding us that, in order for a school to be named for OP, it has to have natural swing.
By decree of the mayor of, "this great state of Mississauga" as emcee Ted Woloshyn dubbed it, members of the City's talented jazz fraternity were ordered to the forefront for this evening, and boy did they — and everyone else involved — respond.
There were innumerable highlights of the Ron Duquette-produced evening but here are a few select samples:
• a positively giddy Molly Johnson off-handedly running down the Gershwin classic But Not For Me (from the 1930s Girl Crazy) while delightedly telling us about how she was checking off one of the most important boxes on her life list — to be accompanied by Oliver Jones.
• Phil Nimmons recalling his absolute shock of hearing the piano played "in totality, in its full dynamic range from top-to-bottom" on first seeing Oscar play live at the Colonial Inn in Toronto many decades ago. Then watching the 84-year-old Nimmons and pianist David Braid (see photo) do a contemporaneous, unrehearsed high-wire act in which they made the audience the complicit third member of the trio.
• Bill King sharing a yellowed, oft-folded 1963 telegram he excitedly received in Jeffersonville, Ind. telling him he had received a scholarship to the Oscar Peterson-Phil Nimmons jazz school. It was clearly a much-treasured keepsake. Then King absolutely ripped through a bluesy, boogie-woogie tribute to you-know-who called 21 Park Rd., the address of said school.
• Port Credit near-neighbours Nancy Walker and Carol McCartney delivering a sumptuous version of the ballad, More Than You Know. McCartney learned the song from an OP-Ella Fitzgerald album. The Problem: how to do justice to a duet played by the greatest pianist in the world and sung by the greatest singer? The answer: "to bask in the glory, not be fading in the shadows of those giants."
• Sheridan Homelands' native Shannon Butcher and the Mississauga Children's Choir doing complete justice to the ultimate OP anthem, Hymn To Freedom. Butcher wasn't intimidated by the different, powerhouse version Measha Brueggergosman, her old classmate at University of Toronto, delivered at Massey Hall recently and delivered her own signature lush version of the difficult song with the choir. As a child Butcher sang with the same group until she was about 10-years-old.
• Ron Duquette's documentary vignettes of Oscar's life, narrated by Quincy Jones and prepared for the 2003 tribute, provided contextual underpinning to the whole evening.
• Celine Peterson, who seems like the most mature 16-year-old imaginable, wound up at the heart of matters. "Even though my dad is gone I know he still loves me," she said. "No matter where the people you love are, remember they still love you too. Happy Valentine's Day."
• a Nancy Walker song dedicated to Oscar, called Sweet Longing, had an extrordinary yearning quality. Despite being just the second time they'd played it together, sparks flew among the keyboardist, bassist Pat Collins and drummer Sly Juhas. It was transporting trio jazz in the finest tradition of the man for whom the night was dedicated.
Maybe it was all said best at the beginning of the night by that young OP Public School student, Anjali Bhopal. "Thank You, Mr. Oscar Peterson," she concluded, "for giving us the greatest gift of all, the gift of music."