Sound recording of the second session of the oral history interview of Oscar Peterson by John McDonough. The interview session took place on 29 and 30 May 1997 at Peterson's home in Mississauga, and was conducted for the Smithsonian Institution's Jazz Oral History Program and in conjunction with the Ella Fitzgerald Oral History Project. The sound engineer, Matt Watson, at times also asks questions, and Oscar Peterson's wife, Kelly Peterson, responds to some questions near the end of the interview. ~The interview is wide-ranging and discusses many aspects of Oscar Peterson's adult life and professional career as a jazz musician. Many topics and themes are opened and are often re-visited during the course of the interview. Among these are: Peterson's longstanding professional, business, and personal relationship with Norman Granz, who often served as his manager and producer; Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) organisation, accounts of JATP tours and other JATP musicians, including the competitive nature of some performances; Peterson encountering the pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi during a JATP tour of Japan, encouraging her to record, and producing her first recording; Granz's managerial and business relationships with Ella Fitzgerald and other jazz artists; the Oscar Peterson Trio / Quartet and its various incarnations and members, including Ray Brown, Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis, Ed Thigpen, Bobby Durham, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (NHØP), Joe Pass, and Martin Drew; Peterson's refusal to use sheet music or monitors during his group's performances; the musical qualities that Peterson looks for in bassists, guitarists, and drummers; jazz clubs in which the Peterson trio worked regularly, such as the London House, Chicago; the lifestyle of the touring jazz musician, its inherent loneliness, the resulting difficulties for personal and family life, and the strategies and hobbies (e.g., photography, astronomy) that Peterson developed in order not to fall into the negative patterns (such as drug and alcohol abuse) to which other touring musicians succumbed; the Advanced School of Contemporary Music which Peterson and others opened in Toronto in the early 1960s; his later activities as a teacher, including as an adjunct professor of music at York University, and his views on jazz in the academy; his meeting and jamming with John Coltrane; his high opinion of the musicianship of Joe Pass and NHØP; his recording projects for Verve, Pablo, Telarc, and other record labels, including recollections of recording sessions (e.g., with Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Anita O'Day, Fred Astaire), the role of Granz as producer of many sessions, the series of duet recordings with trumpeters on Pablo, and the Pablo project which successfully combined Peterson with the contrasting and more economical style of his friend Count Basie; Peterson's aborted 1974 tour of the USSR; solo concerts and recordings, and the different musical philosophy and challenges underlying solo and ensemble jazz performance; compositions by Peterson, their background and inspiration, his compositional processes (he did not notate new works on paper, and only arranged for their transcription after they had been performed and recorded), the meaning of some song titles, and compositions that he created on stage and which have remained in his repertoire (e.g., The Love Ballade, Kelly's Blues); his interest in and use of electronic instruments and recording devices as compositional tools; the question of technique for the jazz performer, the disdain of some music critics for technically advanced players, whether Peterson's advanced technique has led some critics to undervalue his musical accomplishments, and Peterson's views about music critics in general; Peterson's views on the qualities of a good piano, outstanding and poor instruments that he has played, varying piano maintenance standards around the globe, his love for Bosendorfer pianos, and the selection of the Bosendorfer that he acquired for his home; his musical persona, which above all is as a pianist and as one who loves the piano; Glenn Gould (whom Peterson met), and that Peterson's experience as a jazz artist does not lead him to share Gould's view of live performance as a cause of musical conservatism; Peterson's health, including his 1993 stroke, previous mini-strokes, and arthritis; Peterson's family life, including his four marriages and six children; musicians with whom he would have liked to work ( e.g., Pat Metheny, B.B. King, k.d. lang), musicians with whom he would have liked to have worked more often (e.g., Zoot Sims), and a musical project he would have liked to have undertaken (a Christmas mass). <5h 8mn>
