Over the past few evening's Jazz From Blue Lake focused on contemporary, living jazz musicians: trumpeters Chad McCullough and Alex Sipiagin, plus bassist Matt Brewer.
To end the week we jump in the radio time machine and celebrate the centennial birth anniversary of Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson.
Please join us this evening at 10 p.m. for the first performance Peterson made in America during a 1949 Jazz at the Philharmonic Concert, as well as his early hit record "Tenderly." We'll revisit Peterson's oceanic legacy in the first part of each hour after that until 3 a.m. Then this program will stream throughout the weekend from www.bluelakeradio.org .
Peterson's is, literally, a direct descendant of the bravura, orchestral derived piano styling of Franz Liszt (Peterson's early teacher was a student of a student of Liszt) as filtered through his appreciation of giants of jazz piano Art Tatum, Nat King Cole, and Teddy Wilson plus the kings of boogie woogie. The powerful Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff was another influence he absorbed. His sister, Daisy, a classical pianist, was his most important early teacher.
Peterson's intense practice schedule and open ears led him into musical associations on record with Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O'Day, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Stan Getz, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, J.J. Johnson, Lionel Hampton, Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, Jo Jones and Buddy Rich, among many more. We're wallowing in a rich legacy of recorded music tonight on Jazz From Blue Lake.
