Oscar Peterson

Oscar Peterson had the most dazzling piano technique in jazz after Art Tatum, and he used it in the service of pure, hard-swinging joy. Fast, clean, harmonically rich, endlessly inventive, he could do anything on the keyboard and made all of it swing. Duke Ellington nicknamed him the Maharaja of the keyboard, and the regal touch fit.

Born in Montreal to a family that prized discipline, he practiced classical exercises for hours as a boy and carried that rigor into jazz. The result was a player of staggering facility who never let the facility become cold – there was always blues feeling and good humor underneath the fireworks.

His long-running trios, especially the one with bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis, were models of swinging precision and interplay, three virtuosos locked together. Producer Norman Granz championed him for decades, and Peterson became one of the most recorded pianists in the music’s history, a fixture on concert stages around the world.

Some critics found him too polished, too crowd-pleasing, but that misses the warmth and generosity of the playing. He kept performing even after a stroke weakened his left hand, adapting rather than quitting. He was a Canadian national treasure and a global one, proof that virtuosity and feeling can live in the same hands.