Music Monday - Oscar Peterson

Things are sort of dull around the Music Monday composing room, so for the next few weeks the cracked editorial staff has decided on a new feature for the day:

The artwork of David Stone Martin on record covers.

One exciting work of art (called Illustration by some) will be presented here each week until they run out. Most are scans from the editor's personal library and the original copyrights apply.

They are presented here for admiration and educational purposes only.

From WIKI:
Begone Dull Care is an abstract film presentation of Oscar's music, released in 1949.

His work earned him eight Grammy awards over the years and he was elected to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1978. He also belongs to the Juno Awards Hall of Fame and the Canadian Jazz and Blues Hall of Fame.

Peterson received the first Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award from Black Theatre Workshop (1986), Roy Thomson Award (1987), a Toronto Arts Award for lifetime achievement (1991), the Governor General's Performing Arts Award (1992), the Glenn Gould Prize (1993), the award of the International Society for Performing Artists (1995), the Loyola Medal of Concordia University (1997), the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1997), the Praemium Imperiale World Art Award (1999), the UNESCO Music Prize (2000), the Toronto Musicians' Association Musician of the Year award (2001), and an honorary LLD from the University of the West Indies (2006).

In 1999, Concordia University in Montreal renamed their Loyola-campus concert hall Oscar Peterson Concert Hall in his honour.

In 2005, Peterson celebrated his 80th birthday at the HMV flagship store in Toronto, where a crowd of about 200 gathered to celebrate with him. Long time admirer, and fellow Canadian Diana Krall, sang "Happy Birthday" to him and also performed a vocal version of one of Peterson's songs "When Summer Comes". The lyrics for this version were written by Elvis Costello, Krall's husband. Canada Post unveiled a commemorative postage stamp in his honour. The event was covered by a live radio broadcast by Toronto jazz station, JAZZ.FM.

"Technique is something you use to make your ideas listenable," he once told jazz writer Len Lyons. "You learn to play the instrument so you have a musical vocabulary, and you practice to get your technique to the point you need to express yourself, depending on how heavy your ideas are."

"Some may criticize Peterson for not advancing, for finding his niche and staying with it for an entire career, but while he may not be the most revolutionary artist in jazz, the documentary Music in the Key of Oscar demonstrates that breaking down barriers can be accomplished in more ways than one." "He was a crystallizer, rather than an innovator."

Peterson received the BBC-Radio Lifetime Achievement Award, London, England.

"His hands could do things few piano players can do," said pianist Bill King who studied with Peterson at his music school. Because Peterson was a big man — six feet three inches — he could stretch his hands over a keyboard in a way few musicians can match.

Today in 1925, Oscar Peterson was born.