Previously Unreleased Peterson from Verve

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Crossover Media)

This past Friday Verve issued an album of previously unreleased performances of the Oscar Peterson Trio. The full title of the album is The Oscar Peterson Trio at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, and it now has an Amazon.com Web page, which only provides an MP3 download of the 27 tracks. The venue is in Detroit, and all of the tracks were recorded in August of 1960.

The other members of the trio are Ray Brown on bass and drummer Ed Thigpen, both major figures in twentieth-century jazz. The album is very much a compilation, since the tracks were recorded over the course of the two weeks during which the trio was playing at Baker’s. The delay in releasing this trove of Peterson performances was due to the fact that the original recordings were only recently discovered in a mislabeled box in the Verve vaults! That was in time for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Peterson’s birth on August 15, 1925. Roughly half a year later, these performances are now available for listening!

Those familiar with this site probably know that my approaches to jazz tend to be (for better or worse) cerebral. Apparently, I have not written about a Peterson album since December of 2021, in which I assigned him to a “trinity,” whose other members were Johann Sebastian Bach and Art Tatum. That release involved both six selections from Duke Ellington’s book and “A Salute to Bach.” The new release steers away from such sources in favor of a wide diversity of both composers and their works. As a result, listening made for an engaging journey of discovery, whether than involved unfamiliar tunes or unfamiliar arrangements.

My interest in Peterson pre-dates my current writing gig. I have anthologies from both MPS in Germany and Verve here in the United States. Nevertheless, regardless of when a recording was made, I find that there is always something I have not yet discovered on at least one of the album tracks. Ellington declared him the “Maharaja of the keyboard,” but Peterson’s friendship with Art Tatum probably says more about his approach to jazz. I have already accumulated fifteen Tatum CDs, but I am still making discoveries while listening to this new set of three!

SFJAZZ: June, 2024

This month’s offerings in the Joe Henderson Lab of the SFJAZZ Center were folded into a “busy weekend” article. The first half of next month, however, will be devoted to the 41st San Francisco Jazz Festival. All but two of the performances will take place at the Center, while Herbst Theatre and Davies Symphony Hall will each host one event. Those two “exceptions” to the rule will be cited at the end of this article. First, however, there will be an account of Henderson events. For those that do not already know, the Center is located at 201 Franklin Street, on the northwest corner of Fell Street, where the main entrance doors are located. Performance dates, times, and hyperlinks for purchasing tickets are as follows:

Wednesday, June 5, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: The title of the Opening Night program is Unity Through Sound. It will be a performance by the 24-member CO-LLAB Choir, led by keyboardist, vocalist, and arranger Cava Menzies, who is also the co-founder of the Oakland School for the Arts. This ensemble is dedicated to developing new works with a wide array of visionary composers, as well as co-arranging and co-composing music specifically by members of the group.

Thursday, June 6, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: The Lao Tizer Band will make its SFJAZZ debut. They will perform material from AMPLIFY, which will be released both as an album and as a video. Tizer leads from multiple keyboards (including the piano). He will lead a quartet whose other members are Gene Coyle on drums, vocalist Elliott Yamin, and Anthony Crawford on bass.

Friday, June 7, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: The Rodriguez brothers are trumpeter Mike (a member of the SFJAZZ Collective) and Robert on piano. They are the sons of drummer Roberto Rodriguez. In 2015 they released the album Impromptu, which received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Latin Jazz Album. Their repertoire mixes Afro-Cuban rhythms with modern jazz.

Saturday, June 8, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: Nikara Warren is a vibraphonist. Her compositions blend the genres of hip-hop, jazz, neo-soul, and rhythms of both Afro-Latino and Afro-Caribbean origins. As of this writing, it is uncertain whether she will play solo or with a backup group.

Sunday, June 9, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: Kalil Amar Wilson is an alumnus of the Oakland Youth Chorus. They now perform piano music as well as vocals. Their most recent album is Time Stops, sharing composition duties with pianist Dan Marschak. Most likely, this will be a solo performance.

Monday, June 10, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: Drummer and composer Sylvia Cuenca will make her SFJAZZ debut as a leader. Unfortunately, the other members of her combo have not yet been announced. However, since Nat Hentoff has christened her “the fiery incarnation of Art Blakey,” one should probably approach her combo work with high expectations!

Tuesday, June 11, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: This will be a duo performance by Spanish-born jazz pianist Chano Domínguez and Antonio Lizana, who is both a saxophonist and a flamenco singer. They will perform selections from Estándares, released by Altafonte in 2022. Those selections will reimagine standards from different eras, such as Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are,” Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way,” and John Coltrane’s “Resolution” (the second movement of his extended suite A Love Supreme).

Wednesday, June 12, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: Bassist and composer Ben Wolfe will lead a quartet whose other members are Nicole Glover on saxophone, pianist Orrin Evans, and Aaron Kimmel on drums. The program will present selections from Wolfe’s Unjust album. He also plans to preview selections from his next release in 2025, which will consist of four extended compositions.

Thursday, June 13, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: Guitarist and composer Oscar Peñas made his SFJAZZ debut during the 2022–23 season. For this performance he will play electric guitar, leading a trio, whose other members will be Simón Wilson on upright bass, and Marc Ferber on drums. His original compositions weave together jazz, Spanish folk music, and the European classical tradition.

Friday, June 14, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: Cameroonian-American vocalist Ekep Nkwelle will make her San Francisco debut, having already been celebrated as a “rising star” on “the other coast.”

Saturday, June 15, 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.: Jumaane Smith is both a trumpeter and a vocalist. His debut album as a trumpeter was I Only Have Eyes for You, which was released in 2014. This a standards album with a plethora of “guest artists,” one of whom was the young opera vocalist Jackie Evancho. He continued to explore the Great American Songbook in 2020 with the release of When You’re Smiling, which evoked the timeless appeal of Louis Armstrong.

Sunday, June 16, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: The Festival will conclude with a festive Dance Floor Show (which means standing room only for general admission). Music will be provided by Sal’s Greenhouse, an Oakland-based soul and R&B group. They take their name from their leader, vocalist and baritone saxophonist Sally Green.

The two events that will not be taking place in the SFJAZZ Center are as follows:

Friday, June 7, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre: The Big Phat Band is led by pianist, saxophonist, composer, and arranger Gordon Goodwin. This group was formed in 2000 and reflects an impressive diversity of Goodwin’s influences: Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Buddy Rich, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Tower of Power! For their return visit, the group will be joined by the eclectic Bay Area-based string group Quartet San Francisco.

Wednesday, June 12, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall: This program was planned to celebrate the centennial of Canadian piano legend Oscar Peterson. As might be expected, the performances will focus on Peterson’s own compositions. This will include the United States premiere of his AFRICA suite, arranged by John Clayton, and a performance of Canadiana Suite, composed in 1964, in its entirety. The performers will be a quartet led by pianist Benny Green, who had been Peterson’s protégé. Rhythm will be provided by guitarist Russell Malone, Jeff Hamilton on drums, and bassist Clayton (who is also a composer). The program will also feature three other pianists: SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director Kenny Barron, Gerald Clayton, and Tamir Hendelman. Finally, John Clayton and Hamilton will join forces to lead (what else?) the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra.

Alvin Queen’s Combo Album from Copenhagen

courtesy of Sundance Music

Recently I had the opportunity to download tracks from Alvin Queen’s latest album, Night Train to Copenhagen. In spite of his impressive résumé, this was my first encounter with him, either in performance or on recording. He arrived on the scene in the late Sixties, a particularly adventurous time for performing jazz. Indeed, those times were so adventurous that they prompted me to add jazz albums to my all-classical collection. Queen had been mentored by Elvin Jones (whose work with John Coltrane prompted my first jazz album acquisition); but he may best be remembered as the drummer in the Oscar Peterson Trio, a position he maintained until Peterson’s death in 2007.

On Night Train to Copenhagen Queen himself is the leader, performing with the Swedish pianist Calle Brickman and the Danish bassist Tobias Dall. Peterson is represented by “Goodbye J.D.,” which was first released on his We Get Requests trio album. That album was released in 1964, somewhat before the time that Queen came on the scene; and Peterson’s drummer was Ed Thigpen with Ray Brown on bass. However, this album is less a reflection on Peterson than it is a platform for Queen’s Scandinavian colleagues, reflecting on how, during the second half of the twentieth century, Copenhagen was more welcoming to jazz musicians of color than most of the jazz venues in the United States were.

It is therefore not surprising that this album includes a Danish traditional song among the more familiar standards. The tune is “I skovens dybe stille ro” (in the deep quiet tranquility of the forest). Some listeners will be drawn to it for its slight (if not more) reference to Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna;” but the Danish tune probably predates Foster.

For the most part, however, the focus will shift to the more familiar tunes, all given straightforward accounts and imaginative improvisations by Brickman. I think it is important that Queen never lets his drum-work overwhelm (or even intrude upon) his two partners. The result is fifteen tracks of music that all go down well on the ears and remind those of my generation that the jazz trio repertoire is still alive and well.

Oscar Peterson in Helsinki in 1987

courtesy of DL Media

Back in the pre-pandemic age of socializing, I would often find myself in conversation with other amateur pianists. Mostly we would talk about recitals and recordings in the classical genre, but every now and then we would shift over to jazz pianists. Usually the conversation would begin with Thelonious Monk; but, in the broader scope of history, the other name that would occur frequently would be Oscar Peterson.

This was not a surprising topic. Peterson’s own technique seems to have derived from his own pantheon of “keyboard giants” from the past. One of them was Johann Sebastian Bach, and another was Art Tatum. That should not surprise anyone. Both of them understood the “sweet spot” where both invention and technical dexterity cohabited; and Tatum appreciated the classical genre as much as Peterson did (although one of his own influences was his contemporary, Sergei Rachmaninoff).

Those reflections should serve as context when considering a new release from Mack Avenue Records at the end of last month: A Time for Love: The Oscar Peterson Quartet – Live in Helsinki, 1987. This is a two-CD album that documents the final concert of a fourteen-city tour that began in South America and concluded in Europe. The first CD consists of five Peterson originals. In the context of history, the most impressive of these is “A Salute to Bach.” Over the course of about twenty minutes, Peterson unfolds a three-movement homage, dealing more with that context of invention and dexterity than with appropriating any of Bach’s themes or motifs.

On the second CD that same extended duration is directed at a medley of six selections from Duke Ellington’s book, all of which may be regarded as classics in their own right. What is important, however, is that Ellington is not the only composer contributing to this medley. Peterson begins with Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A” Train” before advancing into three Ellington standards: “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Come Sunday, and “C Jam Blues.” He then returns to Strayhorn with “Lush Life” before wrapping up with “Caravan,” which Ellington composed in partnership with his trombonist Juan Tizol.

On that CD the Ellington medley is preceded by compositions by Johnny Mandel (“A Time for Love”), Morgan Lewis (“How High the Moon”), Benny Goodman (“Soft Winds”), Bill Evans (“Waltz for Debby”), and Leigh Harline (“When You Wish Upon a Star”). After those six tracks, the CD concludes with one last Peterson original “Blues Etude.” It goes without saying that Peterson’s command of invention and dexterity unfolds just as imaginatively when he takes on other composers as when he is playing his own works.

The other members of the quartet are guitarist Joe Pass, Dave Young on bass, and drummer Marin Drew. Pass, of course, commands his own toolbox of invention and dexterity. One of the most impressive aspects of this Helsinki date as the frequency with which Peterson allows Pass to take the foreground. (“When You Wish Upon a Star” is given a solo performance by Pass, complementing Peterson’s solo take on “Waltz for Debby”). To some extent this amounts to a mutual admiration society. More often than not, the attentive listener is likely to feel as if (s)he is eavesdropping on a highly intimate conversation, in which sharing one’s fondest thoughts takes priority over any sense of one-upmanship.

Nevertheless, the resulting inventions are so prolific that one is likely to listen to all of the tracks several times, just to make sure that the act of listening can keep up with the act of playing.

Larry Fuller’s Recent Jazz Trio Album

courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications

For some reason or another, the latest album of straight-ahead jazz from pianist Larry Fuller slipped my attention when it was released this past May. However, as they say, better late than never. Overjoyed is a trio album from Capri Records on which Fuller is joined by Hassan Shakur on bass and Lewis Nash on drums. The album has two Fuller originals, “Jane’s Theme” and “The Mooch.” The latter should not be confused with “The Mooche,” the early down-and-dirty jazz classic that Duke Ellington composed with Irving Mills. Some may think that Fuller was out to make fun of a former member of Donald Trump’s administration; but my own opinion is that he was playing around with the idea of a “flip side” for the Ellington classic.

More striking is the diversity of sources that account for the remaining ten tracks on the album. On the pop side the songwriting duo of Ray Evans and Jay Livingston is honored with two of their best-known offerings, “Mona Lisa” and “Never Let Me Go;” and they are complemented on the funkier side by Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed” and Preston “Red” Foster’s “Got My Mo-Jo Working.” Those with more traditional expectations for a jazz trio will be satisfied by George Gershwin’s “How Long Has This Been Going On,” Ray Bryant’s “Cubano Chant,” Oscar Peterson’s “Bossa Beguine,” and two jazz composers, neither of whom were pianists, guitarist Wes Montgomery (“Fried Pies”) and Ray Brown (“Lined With A Groove”). (As might be expected, one hears a lot from Shakur in that last track.) The one discovery for me on this album was the track by Richard Evans, who composed all the tracks on the Ahmad Jamal Macanudo album and conducted the backup orchestra. Fuller’s trio plays “Bossa Nova Do Marilla,” which was one of the tracks on that album.

In the midst of all of this diversity, Fuller consistently comes up with new approaches to invention, each entirely suited to the tune he is playing. I have to say that I felt at least a bit that his own music was being upstaged by the context in which his two tunes were situated on the album. (They were played consecutively between Brown and Gershwin.) Ultimately, however, it is Fuller’s piano work that draws and then holds attention, not only through that inventiveness but also through the compelling chemistry emerging from the constitution of the trio as a whole.

"Young Pianists Play Liszt"

The above is the title of an annual event sponsored by the San Francisco Chapter of the American Liszt Society in collaboration with the San Francisco Conservatory Preparatory Division. Over the last four years the "young pianists" have been Preparatory Division Conservatory students. However, this afternoon at the fifth annual of these events, there were two "guests;" and the second half of the concert was performed by Collegiate Division (as in "not quite so young") students. Any way you cut it, that makes for a lot of Franz Liszt's piano music.

When classical and jazz pianists talk to each other, the conversation often turns to parallels between Liszt and Art Tatum. Both were "undisputed heavyweight champion" masters of the keyboard in their day, not just for technical skill but for the way in which that skill was applied to elaborate and complex embellishments of otherwise simple melodic material. Each had a successor who both continued the line and pushed the envelope further: Ferruccio Busoni and Oscar Peterson, respectively. After that the mold for both lines was pretty much broken, and the respective genres headed into new directions.

I bring this up because even the most avid of jazz listeners often confessed that, where Tatum was involved, a little bit goes a long way. Once CDs came along and the prospect of many hours in little physical space let to a knew "cottage industry" of anthologizing the jazz masters, it became easier to appreciate the wisdom of those listeners. It was not that Tatum was not innovative in his embellishments; it was that he was so innovative that one's cognitive capacity was sated after only a few numbers.

However, Tatum had an advantage over Liszt. He could restrict the duration of a performance to the capacity of a single 78 RPM side. Liszt came from an age where such temporal constraints did not matter, which makes it no surprise that he was one of Richard Wagner's most avid champions! However, this means that Liszt could just go one exploring new embellishments, closer to the spirit of John Coltrane than that of Tatum; and therein lies the risk of trying to arrange an all-Liszt program. The good news is that the risk is somewhat abated by having multiple pianists who bring different ways of performing Liszt to the program. The bad news is that Liszt's excesses often play out in a single composition.

At this particular recital the good news was pretty good. Seven Preparatory and five Collegiate students each executed their respective shares of the program with a sense of their own personality, and we as listeners could appreciate the extent to which that personality grew in depth with the age of the performers. The other good news was that the "bad news" pieces, such as the "Tarantella" movement from the "Venezia e Napoli" supplement to the second of the Annés de Pèlerinage, were kept to a minimum. Furthermore, one of the "guest" students even seemed to have a keen sense of the overall architecture of "Les jeux d'eaux à la villa d'Este," from the third of the Annés de Pèlerinage. Thus, over the "long haul" of a two-hour recital, Liszt fared relatively well in this setting, making it a good opportunity to learn a thing or two about listening to him.

Still, without going into details as excessive as Liszt's embellishments, I should observe that the recital ended with a roaring performance of the "Totentanz" (with a second piano covering the orchestra accompaniment), the same composition that Louis Lortie performed with the San Francisco Symphony under Kurt Masur near the beginning of this season. Now while I would think nothing of sitting through several performances of Tristan und Isolde in a single season (and my wife and I were sorely tempted to return to the movie house for the "repeat broadcast" from the Metropolitan Opera), I wasn't sure I would be up to a second "Totentanz" in a single season (even if separated by about six months). However, if Masur and Lortie seemed to have endowed their performance with the spirit of Halloween, I had to credit the young woman from the Collegiate Division for performing in a gown that was straight from the closet of Morticia Addams. She recognized, as Lortie did, that, for a piece like this, satisfying all the demands of execution is not enough; one must also honor the spirit of the work. In this case that is the spirit of either Halloween or The Addams Family!

Oscar Peterson in Jazz History

After all that writing about Bach, I settled down to watch the 3 PM telecast of the BBC News and learned that Oscar Peterson had died. I was glad to see that the BBC chose this as a "front page" story, even if their coverage left more than a little to be desired. Anyone who has any question as to the importance of reporting the death of such an important jazz pianist would to better to consult Wikipedia over the BBC, since this entry is less concerned with the personality of the man and more with his position in the grand scheme of jazz history.

The difference between the two accounts is most evident in the dog that failed to bark in the BBC account. That dog, of course, was Art Tatum, regarded by many as the strongest influence on Peterson. At the risk of making it all sound too reductive, just about any form of Western music comes down to the art of embellishment, how and where it is applied, how extensive it is, and, as the forms became more developed, how embellishments themselves could be embellished. In the history of classical music, Franz Liszt pushed embellishment to extremes that could be exasperating, if not offensive to some of more disciplined natures. To call Tatum the Liszt of jazz would not constitute offense to either pianist. Indeed, one of the frequent comments made about the vast catalog of Tatum recordings is that a little bit can go a long way.

However, in the spirit of that analogy, if Tatum was the Liszt of jazz, then Peterson was its Busoni, highly virtuosic in his understanding of both how to apply embellishment to the underlying "text" (i.e. song) and how to execute the embellishing without the embellished getting lost in the blur. When the CD was finally released of a session organized by Norman Granz that brought Peterson together with Count Basie, this was the first sentence on the back of the jewel case:

It could be argued that no two pianists could be more unalike than Count Basie, the master of understatement, and Oscar Peterson, the avatar of speed, power, and embellishment.

My own pet name for this CD is "The Minimalist Meets the Maximalist." The "official" name, however, is The Timekeepers, wherein all proper respect resides. Time was of the essence for both of these men, who knew full well that, without an "art of time," there is no "art of music." Thus, time was also the one element that could unite two such disparate performers, each of which understood the other in terms of strategies for how time passes (that last phrase having emerged in the title of an essay by Karlheinz Stockhausen, who may not have been a slouch where jazz was concerned).

Basie died back in 1984. Indeed, too many of the greatest who had performed so well with Peterson are gone as well. Atheist that I am, I still cannot resist the fantasy that they are all up there in heaven waiting for Oscar to join the jam. Meanwhile, there is so much of Oscar in every recording he made that the rest of us can keep learning to be better listeners from those recordings for some time to come.