NEW HERITAGE MINUTE TOASTS LEGENDARY OSCAR PETERSON
Feb 17, 2021
By Bob Komsic
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The late great Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson’s career is being celebrated in a Heritage Minute.
Released during Black History Month by Historica Canada, the minute-long video chronicles the 7-time Grammy winner’s rise from a working-class Montreal family to becoming a world renowned piano virtuoso.
While touching on his encounters with greatness, it also acknowledges the racism he faced in the 1940s.
Peterson’s daughter, Celine Peterson, who serves as producer of the Kensington Market Jazz Festival, says the timing of the video is significant.
”A huge part of my dad’s story was racism, first at home and then around the world,” especially prominent early in his career as he travelled around the southern U.S.
”Hearing him talk about it is still haunting for me today. Maybe eve a bit more so now than it was before.”
Peterson died of kidney failure in 2007 at the age of 82.