Making Each Note Count

It’s the spring of 1993 and Oscar Peterson, the reigning king of jazz piano, is settling in for the first night of a weeklong engagement at the Blue Note club in New York.

Working with Ray Brown on bass and Bobby Durham on drums, Peterson is ripping off the fleet-fingered lines, rich harmonies and driving rhythms that have made him the most admired jazz pianist of his generation. The music flows with urgency, propelled by Peterson’s precision, accuracy and fluency.

How precise, accurate and fluent? Think of legendary baseball pitchers Sandy Koufax or Steve Carlton carving the strike zone with a meticulous control that drove hitters to swing their bats in hopeless frustration, fractions of an inch away from elusive fast balls and curves.

Peterson’s playing represents a similar combination of finesse and power, capable of shifting in an instant from lush, rhapsodic harmonies to driving, irresistibly swinging up-tempos. It’s not surprising that he has been the musical model of choice for decades of young pianists.

But, at the close of Peterson’s first set, something is missing. The pianist’s awesome digital dexterity isn’t finding the notes. Like a Koufax curve that slips unaccountably into the fat part of the strike zone, Peterson’s always-reliable left hand isn’t delivering the goods.

Longtime associate Brown remembers the evening well. “It was actually after the group had played,” he says. “Oscar used to play for a few minutes by himself at the end of the set, and there was this left-hand figure he did, a very fast thing, and he never missed it. But this night he did, on the first show, and he missed it bad. So I didn’t say anything.

“The second show he missed it again. And I said to myself, ‘Boy, something must be on his mind.’ Then we came back the next night, and he missed it again. So I said to him, ‘What’s going on?’ I knew something was going on.”

What was going on was something that would change Peterson’s life. Still at the peak of his powers, with literally hundreds of recordings in existence and a front-page jazz career stretching back more than five decades, Peterson had suffered a stroke.

“It was strange. I don’t remember any pain or any particular discomfort other than the way the fingers on my left hand reacted,” says Peterson, who was unaware of the stroke at that time.

But he knew he didn’t want to let anyone know what was happening.

“I pooh-poohed Ray Brown,” he says, “probably because of my ego. And I finished the engagement at the Blue Note.”

The following day, the trio was back in Toronto, Peterson’s home, to perform on a television show associated with the Glenn Gould Prize, which was being awarded to Peterson.

“They had me slated for a solo piano thing,” he recalls, “but I felt a little weird, struggling with the left hand. When I saw they had me scheduled for a solo thing, I told the director there was no way I could do it. I said, ‘My left hand is gone,’ and told him I thought I could get through a trio thing, which I did. But I knew something had to be done.”

After the show, Peterson received a medical examination and was told he had suffered a stroke, caused by high blood pressure rather than an arterial blockage.

“I wasn’t hospitalized for it,” he says, “but I was sent back to the clubhouse--which means home--not allowed to pitch the rest of the game.”

When he became aware of the seriousness of his condition, he responded with dismay.

“I was terribly depressed,” he recalls, fully aware at the time that his astonishing technique, a hallmark of his playing, was no longer completely accessible.

Initially, it meant hours of therapy, both to regain control and flexibility as well as to deal with the debilitating psychological trauma of having the control of his instrument, the center of his creative self, drastically changed.

“There was a physical therapist from India named Diana Lekkerker who came in and saw how depressed I was because I didn’t feel I could play anymore,” he recalls. “But she looked at me and said, ‘You’re going to play again. If it takes my coming to your house every day, that’s what I’ll do.’ So she came twice a week to put me through therapeutic treatments--a series of flexing exercises and pressure to build up muscular strength--as well as acupuncture.”

It was two or three months before Peterson was able to start using his left hand on the keyboard again. And what he describes as the “mental thing” was as difficult to deal with as the physical disability.

“It was my wife, Kelly, who got me through it,” says Peterson. “She was the one who said I had to do the therapy and made sure I did it when I was supposed to. My wife, and my little girl, Celine, 7. They’re the ones who deserve the real credit for my coming back.” (Peterson has six children from previous marriages, ranging in age from 21 to 51.)

Within a year, his playing level rose dramatically, although with reduced facility in his left hand.

How has the stroke affected Peterson’s playing? Southern California listeners will have the opportunity to judge for themselves Wednesday night at the Hollywood Bowl, when he makes his first Los Angeles appearance since 1990. Appropriately, given his remarkable recovery from a career-threatening disability, the program is titled “Oscar Peterson Returns.’ Also on the program: singer-pianist Diana Krall and her trio, and the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, conducted by Jack Elliott.

Peterson, who celebrated his 73rd birthday on Saturday, has returned to a fairly full schedule of recording and performing. This, despite the fact that he has, for years, been afflicted with severe arthritis that has affected his knees but not his hands. A large man, Peterson now spends much of his time in a wheelchair.

“I don’t use it to come on stage, of course,” he says. “But, like most arthritics, the weather controls my life. So I have to be careful when it gets changeable.”

Weather changes notwithstanding, his schedule is indeed active. This week, for example, after he finishes his Bowl program, he will travel to Oakland for a rare, three-night club engagement at Yoshi’s Jazz Club in Jack London Square. But he is, nonetheless, coolly analytical of the status of his skills.

“I still can’t do some of the things I used to be able to do with my left hand,” he says. “But I’ve learned to do more things with my right hand. And I’ve also moved in a direction that has always been important to me, toward concentrating on sound, toward making sure that each note counts.”

A quick listen to the seven albums Peterson has recorded since his return to action reveals a sparseness in the left-hand area of the keyboard that will be apparent only to pianists or very careful listeners. For the casual observer, it means that the lower notes in Peterson’s pianistic expression--the bass figures and bottom notes of chords--are not as fluent as they once were. But, as many pianists point out, Peterson’s right hand alone is as effective as many players performing with both hands. There’s no question that Peterson’s virtuosic technique always has served him well, but never more effectively than in his post-stroke performances.

Pianist Benny Green, 35, recorded the duo album “Oscar and Benny” with Peterson last year. A Peterson protege and former member of bassist Brown’s own trio, Green was aware of the stroke’s impact upon Peterson’s left hand, but he found no need to provide any particular musical compensation from his own instrument.

“He’s able to get such a full and warm sound out of the piano, primarily with his right hand,” says Green, “that I approached the interaction as if I were playing with a singer or a horn player or any other instrument, trying to blend the sound of the piano with the other instrument--in this case Oscar’s piano.

“I wanted to leave as much space as possible, because he really doesn’t even need a secondary chording instrument. And I’ll tell you this: No matter what Oscar’s limitations may or may not be, it’s a challenge for any pianist to play alongside him.”

Peterson’s enormous powers as an improviser have been present virtually from the beginning.

“We came up about the same time,” says pianist Dave Brubeck. “And Oscar had everything going for him when he was still very young, maybe before he was 20. He had already encompassed what a jazz pianist should be.”

He arrived at that level of skill from a strong background in classical piano, practicing for hours a day to hone his technique. Born Aug. 15, 1925, in Montreal, Peterson initially studied piano with his older sister, Daisy, then with jazz pianist Lou Hooper and classical Hungarian teacher Paul deMarkey. He won an amateur music competition in 1940 and debuted on the “Fifteen Minutes of Piano Rambling” radio program in Montreal in 1940.

“Daisy was a real taskmaster when I was a kid,” says Peterson, the third of five children. “I used to call her ‘Attila.’ Sometimes my father [a train conductor and avid music fan] used to be away for two weeks at a time, and he always insisted that we practice while he was gone, and gave us the same exercises to do.”

But Peterson, who has perfect pitch and the ability to quickly grasp and reproduce music as he hears it, spent most of the time playing on the street instead of practicing at the piano.

“Daisy always used to practice the lesson hard the day before my father returned,” Peterson recalls. “So I would sit on the stoop and hear what she played, and get it down that way, by listening without practicing. That worked fine until Dad found out what I was up to and began giving different lessons to each of us.”

Peterson was, in any case, far more attracted to improvising than to playing exercises or written pieces.

“I was already drawn to improvisation,” says Peterson. “I studied classical music, of course, but I liked the idea of creating something new each time I sat down at the keyboard. I still do.”

He acknowledges, however, that his classical training significantly effected the aspect of playing that is most important to him--the command of the instrument.

“Oscar told me,” says Green, “that the first thing he does when he sits down at a piano is to gauge the key drop--how far the keys on an individual instrument need to be depressed before the hammer hits the strings. He says--and he makes it sound so simple--that once he scopes that out, then he’s in complete control of the piano. For the rest of us, of course, there are a lot more steps involved.”

Peterson’s first jazz trio was formed in 1948; “Nat Cole was the inspiration for that group,” he says. In 1951, he signed with jazz impresario Norman Granz in an association that was to continue for decades, producing hundreds of recordings and generating appearances around the world. (For Peterson’s selection of his most effective recordings, see story, Page 79.)

Peterson has recorded with, among others, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker. He has composed and/or performed with Les Ballets Jazz du Canada, the National Film Board of Canada and the BBC, and has starred in and hosted many television programs in which he has interviewed and performed with numerous guests.

The classic Peterson trio is, for many listeners, the group organized in the early ‘50s with Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis. When drummer Ed Thigpen replaced Ellis, the group’s focus shifted from a trio in which each instrument could provide melody and harmony to a more standard piano, bass and drums format. Either way, Peterson insisted upon meticulous musicality.

“We had an organized, well-rehearsed musical organization,” Brown recalls. “It was compact. Everybody knew what they had to play, and how to play it, and they could perform it under any kind of conditions in any venue.”

The smoothness of the recordings from that period and his later partnerships with Danish bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen testifies to the effectiveness of Peterson’s desire to produce music that was spontaneously creative, filled with driving swing, using a repertoire of American popular song. (Pedersen will perform with him at the Bowl along with drummer Martin Drew and guitarist Ulf Wakenius.)

Although he has a large collection of original compositions, and hasn’t hesitated to record and perform with a wide array of artists, the essential message in his music has remained the same, always focused upon the spontaneous combustion of his piano playing.

Elements of Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum and Bud Powell occasionally surface through the distillation of his playing. But Peterson was a largely individual voice almost from the beginning, aware not only of the surging need to swing, but also of the subtle note placements of pianists such as Count Basie and Thelonious Monk.

Though he has been sometimes criticized in the past for his extraordinary technique--with the implicit suggestion that he uses it as a substitute for more intensive creativity--Peterson shrugs off the comments.

“You do what you have to do with whatever means you have at hand,” he says.

Brubeck adds, somewhat more pointedly, “Well, if you’ve got all that technique, it would be terrible not to use it.”

But Peterson insists upon putting the technique in context. Often compared to Tatum, perhaps the most virtuosic of all jazz pianists, he demurs.

“Tatum impressed me less for his technique,” says Peterson, “than for his innovative sense of harmony.” And he goes on to praise players who he feels had “individual voices”--players such as Erroll Garner, Phineas Newborn Jr. and Lennie Tristano.

What is the Peterson legacy? Brown believes that it lies in the primal contributions he has made to the development of his instrument’s role in jazz.

“I don’t think very many people actually contribute to the music itself,” he says. “That’s left to very few like Dizzy [Gillespie] and Bird [Charlie Parker]. When they came up with that stuff they did, they brought a change in music.

“More often, I think that contributions are made to the instrument. Take Lester Young, for example. He brought something new to the saxophone, something different from Coleman Hawkins. The music was there; he just did it a different way. What I would say is that Oscar has made an enormous contribution to the piano. It hasn’t been the same since he came on the scene.”

Green, whose association with Peterson only dates back to 1992, agrees. But he also adds--from a younger man’s point of view--his gratitude for Peterson’s impact as a musical educator. He has a warm recollection of an event that took place when he was recording the duo album with Peterson. In many respects, it defines Peterson’s convictions as a performer, as well as his present attitude toward life.

“We had two pianos set up side by side,” says Green, “and I was having a lot of trouble with the key action on mine.”

Not wanting to complain, he quietly confided the problem to the sound engineer. But Peterson overheard the conversation.

“He asked me, ‘Are you having a hard time with that piano, Benny?’ ” says Green. “And I was so embarrassed that I said, ‘No.’ ”

But Peterson persisted, suggesting that they switch pianos.

“When we went back into the studio, I went to the instrument I’d been playing, and Oscar cut me off at the pass, saying, ‘I’ll play that one.’ Well, we did a take and Oscar just played the stuffings out of the piano.

“So I turned to him and said, ‘I see it’s not the piano, it’s the piano player.’ And he just smiled and said, ‘One must adjust.’ Someone told me that after I left the studio, Oscar said, with a smile, ‘Well, that was a good lesson for that young man.’ ”

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The Oscar Peterson Quartet at Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., with the Diana Krall Trio and Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra. Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. $7.50-$50. (323) 850-2000.