Oscar Peterson Trio
On The Town With The Oscar Peterson Trio

When Keith Jarrett was still a teenager, when Bill Evans had already shown his qualities as a session-man but had not yet fully expressed his instrumental potential as a leader, when Brad Mehldau's parents likely hadn't even met yet, there was already a pianist making waves in a trio: the Canadian Oscar Peterson.

This recording made in a Toronto venue in 1958 perfectly captures (perhaps that’s where the cover image comes from) his style, based on overflowing technique and an absolutely impeccable sense of swing. Characteristics nonetheless subservient to musical expressiveness: the widespread belief of some critics who saw in this gentleman a virtuoso monster producing technique for technique’s sake without conveying any feeling to the listener, in my humble opinion, does not correspond at all to reality.
The notes indeed gush from the keyboard right from the first standard tackled on this occasion, the legendary “Sweet Georgia Brown,” but always within a precise sonic framework, defined by Ray Brown's double bass (a legendary figure in the history of the instrument for his extremely solid sense of rhythm) and Herb Ellis's guitar, six strings that magnificently substitute for the drums, even venturing into some scattered solos here and there.

Among the gems of this magnificent sonic necklace, there is certainly “Easy Listenin' Blues,” played by our subject with supreme mastery, rationing and distilling the composition with truly exquisite taste, and the wonderful ballad “Moonlight in Vermont,” immersed in a nocturnal atmosphere of dreamy sweetness (an atmosphere of starry skies and passionate kisses rather than pitch-black darkness and soul shadows).
And if the above-mentioned necklace is placed in a magnificent case (laminated gatefold cover and an internal booklet full of technical data and photographs), it becomes clearer that you are in the presence of an almost unmissable product. And there is one detail to add that brings us back to the beginning of the discussion. The Jarrett-like way of accompanying himself with his voice while playing (a way that has attracted some criticism for being seen as exhibitionism) is the same as the Oscar examined emits in this performance from almost fifty years ago.

It is indeed true that "Nothing is created and nothing is destroyed", not even the enduring memory of the aforementioned performance, most likely.