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FYI

A Podcast Conversation With ... Oscar Peterson

In this 1992 interview with the Canadian jazz great, the informality of the setting and Peterson’s ease in responding to the questions made the exchanges a step beyond the conventional. Hear more in this FYI podcast.

A Podcast Conversation With ... Oscar Peterson

By Bill King

I spent the past week sifting through cassettes of past interviews - some dating back to my days at Q-107 and Q-Jazz in 1985. Conversations with the titans of jazz. One such cassette contains an interview with Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson just after the release of In the Key of Oscar in 1992, an excellent documentary produced by Oscar’s niece Sylvia Sweeney, daughter of Oscar’s sister and first piano teacher – Daisy Peterson. Sweeney herself is a decorated Olympian in basketball, an Order of Canada recipient and champion of many social causes.


The informality of the setting and Peterson’s ease in responding to the questions made the exchanges a step beyond the conventional. A musician asks far different questions than a DJ or talking head, much like someone who has played the game of baseball and works themselves from the bottom up into the broadcasting booth.

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Peterson experienced a stroke in 1993 after undergoing hip replacement surgery and playing at the Blue Note nightclub. It’s hard to grasp what went through Peterson’s mind for the next fourteen years till his passing in 2007. Yet, the thousands of concerts performed over 60 years, hundreds of recordings, and the many citations and celebrations in his name tell much about the man and the piano he so cherished.

Oscar is that bridge between the past and the present – Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Nat Cole, Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines and Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett. No one swings harder or plays with such a lilting touch.

Oscar Peterson! Learn more in this week's FYIMUSICNEWS.ca Podcast!

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H.E.R.
Steven Moran
H.E.R.
Awards

See Who Was Nominated — and Who Was Passed Over — in Oscars’ 2025 Music Categories

This is the fifth year in a row that one or more non-English language songs has been nominated for best original song.

Diane Warren received her 16th Oscar nomination for best original song on Thursday (Jan. 23) — a tally equaled by only three other songwriters in the 91-year history of the category. Sammy Cahn leads with 26 nods, followed by Johnny Mercer with 18 and Paul Francis Webster, also with 16. Warren was nominated this year this year for “The Journey,” sung by H.E.R. in The Six Triple Eight.

Moreover, this is the eighth year in a row Warren has been nominated, which enables her to tie Cahn for the longest continuous streak of nominations in this category. Cahn was nominated eight years running from 1954 to 1961.

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