Jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson (photograph by Tom Marcello, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license, from Wikimedia Commons)
Last night the 41st San Francisco Jazz Festival, hosted by SFJAZZ, presented the United States premiere of Oscar Peterson’s The Africa Suite, which was coupled by a full performance of his Canadiana Suite. The performance took place in Davies Symphony Hall with an impressively full house. All that was missing was a program book with background material for both the music and the performers; but they do not seem to do those things at SFJAZZ, even when a premiere offering is at stake.
For those unfamiliar with the name, Peterson was one of the leading jazz pianists during the twentieth century; and his Wikipedia page goes as far as to declare him “one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time.” This would be consistent with Duke Ellington declaring him the “Maharaja of the keyboard.” He could take a familiar tune and spin out an extended improvisation, which would include passing nods to any number of other tunes. His “comfort zone” seemed to be in small groups, with a preference for trios over solos.
Over the course of listening to his recordings, I have been impressed by how he could take a little bit and make it go a long way. That talent was more than evident in the first half of last night’s program, which was framed by two trio performances. The first was led by pianist Tamir Hendelman, joined by guitarist Russel Malone and Robert Hurst on bass. The other saw pianist Kenny Barron performing with the same rhythm pair. Between these two sets was a solo performance by pianist Benny Green, raised in Berkeley and a Peterson protégé. None of Green’s selections were familiar to be, but the trio offerings were rich with familiar standards.
Most important, however, was the sophistication of the keyboard work over the course of those three sets. This could not have been a better acknowledgement of the richness of the Peterson legacy. However, I was not prepared for how much this would be a drain on attentiveness. The running joke about Peterson’s sets used to be that a little bit goes a long way. In that context it would be fair to say that attentive listening to the three sets preceding the intermission was on a par with listening to one of the symphonies by Gustav Mahler.
The down-side of this experience was that, by the time of the intermission, I realized that I was far too saturated with reflections on the performances to cram anything else into my brain. I have no regrets about this circumstance. I have always preferred the “chamber music” side of jazz to the broader expanse of a large group like the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, which had been recruited to play the two suites.
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