Passage III

HUMANITIES: Passage A is adapted from the book A NaturalHistory of the Piano by Stuart Isacoff (©2011 by Stuart Isacoff). Passage B is adapted from the essay “Oscar Peterson, My Teacher” by Mike Longo (©2011 by Stuart Isacoff).

Passage A by Stuart Isacoff

For Oscar Peterson the piano had long been a trusted companion—sparking early dreams, conferring a place in the history books, and easing his way in a world of racial strife. Now, at eighty-one, he looked worn out. Arriving at the stage of New York's landmark jazz club Birdland, he struggled to move onto the piano bench.

Yet, as soon as the keyboard was within reach, he thrust out his right arm and grabbed a handful of notes; at that signal, the bass player, drummer, and guitarist launched into their first number. And suddenly there was that sound. He still had it—a musical personality as large as life, steeped in tradition yet recognizably, unmistakably all its own.

For dazzling technique, he followed the lessons of the European classical tradition, culled from childhood sessions first with his sister, Daisy, then with local pianist Louis Hooper and the Hungarian teacher Paul de Marky. He was so serious about his lessons as a young boy that he would practice for up to eighteen hours at a time, he said, on days “when my mother didn't drag me off the stool.” De Marky was a good model: he had studied in Budapest with Stefan Thomán, who had studied with the great Franz Liszt—a musical titan of his day and the founder of modern piano technique.

De Marky trained Peterson in that great tradition, and assigned the pianist other staples of the repertoire, such as Chopin's treacherously difficult Etudes. And as he taught Peterson, Paul de Marky honed in on Chopin's most important trait. “I don't hear the melody singing,” he would tell his student. “The melody is choppy. Make it sing.” And so the works of the celebrated classical composers—great improvisers, all—served as his training ground.

Paul de Marky also encouraged Oscar Peterson's immersion in the jazz canon. Peterson remembered, “What I loved about him was that he was not shortsighted. He was a fantastic classical pianist. But I would come to him for a lesson, and he'd be playing jazz records”－greats like Teddy Wilson, Nat “King” Cole, and Duke Ellington. “Their playing served as my rudiments,” he reported.

Oscar Peterson's rise to the top of the jazz pantheon was based on a formula that merged the classical European tradition and the homespun American one. But he focused especially on a common denominator he had found in the approach of all the greats: their refusal to settle for anything less than a full command of their resources. “I never tried to sound like a trumpet or a clarinet,” he said. “I was taught to respect [this instrument] for what it was: a piano. And it spoke with a certain voice.” He had always striven, he explained, to be the kind of musician who could take advantage of the entire keyboard, of everything the instrument was capable of producing.

Passage B by Mike Longo

During the 1960s I had the honor of being Oscar Peterson's private student. He and some colleagues had started a school for contemporary music, and though there had to be around fifty students, after about two or three weeks he took me under his wing. From that time on, I saw him three or four times a week, instead of the usual once. He gave me the key to his studio so I could practice on his piano. That was necessary, because he had me practicing thirteen hours a day.

He transformed my playing. I had already graduated college as a piano major, but no one had ever spoken to me about my physical approach to the instrument. I was playing with my wrist down. He had me raise it, and taught me to play without a lot of arm weight. The technique originated with Liszt; it allows you to strike the keys without ever exerting yourself.

He also taught me the true meaning of piano “style,” which has to do with developing a personal sound. Think of all the jazz organists, he said, who each have a tremendous number of “stops” at their disposal, mechanical devices on the instrument that change the quality of the sound. Despite that variety of choice, they all use the same ones, so every jazz organist ends up sounding exactly like Jimmy Smith, the jazz master who popularized the instrument. To have real style, he explained, means to create a sound that is instantly recognizable as yours.

So Oscar Peterson didn't let his students play like him—or like anybody else, for that matter. One day I was using chord voicings [particular spatial arrangements of the tones in a harmony] like those of Bill Evans and he yelled: “You know that's not you!” He had a formula for achieving beautiful results at the piano. He called it “the five T's”: touch, time, tone, technique, and taste. Of course, he had them all.