A Night in Peterson’s Honor, If Not in His Presence

In 1949, the Jazz at the Philharmonic troupe was playing through Montreal when producer Norman Granz stumbled across the most amazing piano player on local radio. It was 24-year-old Toronto native Oscar Peterson, who had recorded and broadcast considerably in Canada but was completely unknown in America. Granz arranged for the young virtuoso to come to New York and perform as a special guest at JATP’s upcoming Carnegie Hall concert. Mr. Peterson, playing in a duet with the already famous bassist Ray Brown, is said to have completely stopped the show.Nearly 60 years later, Mr. Peterson is still stopping the show every time he plays with his signature dexterity and lightning-quick runs on the keys. On Friday night an impressive roster of pianists and other musicians returned to Carnegie Hall, the site of Mr. Peterson’s American debut, to pay homage to one of the most quintessential jazzmen of the 20th century.The major disappointment of the evening, announced earlier in the week, was that the man of honor was too ill to appear; otherwise, apart from the astoundingly poor acoustics (for jazz, anyhow) of the world’s most famous concert hall, the very long program went off without a hitch. Billed as part of the Fujitsu Jazz Festival (which, this year, would appear to be a one-concert festival), “Tribute to Oscar Peterson: Master of Swing,” was produced by Pat Philips and Ettore Stratta, and pianist Roger Kellaway served as musical director.To a certain extent, the idea was to represent various facets of Mr. Peterson’s music and career. Mr. Kellaway began with “I Was Doing All Right,” which re-created the early Peterson trios with bass (Christian McBride) and guitar (Russell Malone), a format inspired by one of Mr. Peterson’s own major influences, Nat King Cole. Later, Mr. Peterson’s debt to Cole was represented by that pianist-singer’s gifted younger brother, Freddy Cole. Then Mr. Kellaway introduced the clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera and the drummer Lewis Nash for “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and the quintet replicated Mr. Peterson’s blazingly fast signature speed-demon technique.In the second half of the show, the bassist David Finck paid homage to Mr. Peterson’s partnerships with great bassists, especially Ray Brown and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, with an eloquent solo on “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans.” Several of the (comparatively) younger players performed Mr. Peterson’s original compositions: Mulgrew Miller played the classically informed “Blues Etude,” while the 20-year-old virtuoso Eldar and Mr. Peterson’s fellow Canadian Renee Rosnes, each took on a movement from his 1964 “Canadiana Suite.”However, the rules about playing something related to the Peterson oeuvre were relaxed in terms of the musicians from Mr. Peterson’s own generation, most of whom appeared in the first half — as if the producers feared the worst.Hank Jones, for instance, played one of his own concert specialties, “Recorda-Me,” although Marion McPartland wove stunningly beautiful harmonies around the Peterson favorite “Tenderly.” Trumpeter Clark Terry reprised “Mumbles,” the classic comedy blues he introduced with Mr. Peterson in 1964, although the gag was nearly ruined by the dreadful acoustics of the room — people who hadn’t heard it before simply assumed that Mr. Terry’s singing was being distorted by the room without realizing that he was mumbling incoherently, but in perfect time.Mr. Terry was then joined by Ms. McPartland for a heartfelt “Nearness of You,” the ballad highlight of the evening, on which he displayed more feeling in the first four notes than most musicians manage in a lifetime.The producers also featured two European string players of the kind they normally feature in their ongoing series of Django Reinhardtinspired concerts: the violinist Florin Niculescu, and Borislav Strulev, who plays jazz cello like I’ve never heard it before. Their relevance to the subject of the evening was tenuous, but they are each florid, captivating players. Mr. Niculescu was called upon to climax both halves of the show, the second well after 11 p.m., in a very competitive jam on “Oh, Lady Be Good” with Mr. D’Rivera. It was surprising that anyone would have been expected to follow both Dee Dee Bridgewater and then Wynton Marsalis, who plowed through an aggressive series of choruses on “Just Friends.”Ms. Bridgewater was the evening’s vocal headliner, and the only singer given two songs, although, as always, she’s much stronger on extroverted swingers (an Ella Fitzgerald-ian “How High the Moon”) than on intimate ballads. Before her, Roberta Gambarini was cool and subdued on a Sarah Vaughan-inspired “Poor Butterfly” (she began a capella, perhaps to get around the murky acoustics of the room); Hilary Kole, the most recent vocalist to record with Mr. Peterson, was, contrastingly, warm and expressive on “Bewitched.” The miraculous Freddy Cole, who, with tenor obligato master Houston Person, was somehow cool and warm at the same time on “Blame It on My Youth,” having timed his appearance in between his early and late shows at the Iridium.Like Mr. Peterson’s 60-year career, the evening was long, stretching nearly to midnight. But how else would you honor one of the longest, most prodigious and prolific, and consistently brilliant track records in the entire history of jazz?wfriedwald@nysun.com

A Night in Peterson’s Honor, If Not in His Presence

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