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From: amberbourbon
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  • the people that disliked this video should be shot.

  • Oscar plays what he feels... (and he feels good)!

  • OSCAR 大大大大大好き♡  Love it!

  • I always mistake the beginning of the melody to Waltz for Debby with All the Things You Are.

  • @Bugera369 That is musical dyslexia.

  • I don't like his of Round Midnight : he fills in the tune with lots of notes, and I really don't think Monk wouldn't have found it interesting either (though I'm not him). Better check out Bud or Jarret on this one.

  • this for bob john all them

  • Real important to know that of courese you can't play like this without heaps of practice time (especially when young) like 5, 6, 7 or more hours a day but that won't do it; you gotta have a genius talent to back it up. He's got that!

  • Oscar peterson peaked the day he died.

  • Oscar was Beethoven in one of his past incarnations! Unsurpassed!

  • @billyconnearly saying that is being stubborn because when beethoven made andplayed music, it was all 100% planned and every song he wrote was to the music theory book and not a page off. This is 100% jazz and improv and if anything would be near Bach's kind of style.

  • @VenousPlatypus

    beethoven could improvise for sure.

    and also, to what 'theory book' did beethoven write all of his songs?! i want it cuz that must be one motherfckin book!

    by the same token, oscar's my hero btw, if you ever think any one of oscar's solos are 100% improv then you're mistaken. even charlie parker and miles would openly share that they got heaps of their improvising ideas from CLASSICAL composers like bach, stravinsky and schoenberg, etc.

  • Keyboard art....

  • Well that came from years of practice it didnt happen over night. As a kid he practiced like 5 hours a day. You be that good if you practiced and had the commitment he had. A lot of people today just dont have the commitment Oscar had. Yeah he had talent too helped him even more. If he never practiced he would have never gotten that good.

  • I'll never understand how he gets his left and right hands to improv in unison at that speed!

  • @1979saxman that's practice..

  • HOW in the world does he manage to move his fingers so freakin fast.

  • @yunikk04 because he practiced like 24 hours a day lol. He has near perfect technique. The more you practice the better you get.

  • RenoRaider.Can't you respond to a comment by saying something relevant? No-one is asking you to agree but we are all entitled to an opinion

  • You know your a beast and arrived when you can bring a whole band and the only thing they are capable of doing is just watch you play...lol

  • @PhillyBassMonster he was rocking on that piano near the end. He's a beast. Its videos like this that make me want to practice more. It really inspires me.

  • @860125mwj AMEN!!!!

  • If there was a transmogrification of time and the piano greats played side by side I bet it would be Liszt>Tatum>Peterson in terms of overall technical ability. Peterson tried but nobody has ever had complete mastery as Liszt, the inventor and premier exponent of modern piano technique. Even at sightreading Liszt was uncanny, playing Chopin's difficult op10 etudes at first sight.

  • @crimple7

    albeit that Art Tatum couldn’t ‘sight read’ per se :P

    I love Art Tatum though, and Liszt is my favourite musician ever.

    Oscar Peterson is brilliant.

  • A genius on the instrument, without question, but it can hardly be denied he often needlessly decorated his later work with technical brilliance to prove his status of being at least on par with, if not above, that of Tatum. Yet neither Tatum or Peterson - however beautiful a ballad selected -seemed able to inject that element of distinctly personal emotional magic which made other great jazz pianists immediately recognisable.

  • @golsno147 unadulterated hogwash.

  • @golsno147. As great as it was, it will never measure up to a Tatum. Tatum is 10, Oscar is 7, and everybody elsi is fighting for 6.

  • inceible muy bueno impresionante pero me gusta mas bill evans

  • @karpi86 Wao, I never thought I would see anybody say that, but I can really understand. Bill was awesome. Way too harmonical and sentimental!

  • grande oscar

  • His ending is amazing!

  • I'm not saying he's not brilliant, but I don't really understand the interjection of these frenetic and somewhat meandering lines into round midnight (example 00:47). Sounds a little bit like technical autopilot to me

  • I love the way O.P. injects a little 'down home' into 'Debbie'.

  • That is a man who dominated his instrument. The rest of the band is there for show.

    >/.

  • God did the sensible thing and resigned. O.P. now sits on the throne.

  • nice!!! very nice!!!!

  • i love this guy, oscar your the best

  • who was greater oscar or art tatum?

  • @lyles2300 it's not a competition or shouldn't be, it's about soul and it's ability to move you...weither by the music of our bro's here or the by thier sheer courage to play in what was purest form of aparthied and racism and stuff going down these bro's were developing the future of music ...for the black man? NO! for all j]mankind...listen enjoy, learn.

  • Different styles, genres, eras, etc... Why bother comparing two obvious geniuses? They're both worth listening to (though I'd say Oscar changes it up more and played with all-stars). But I mean, there's that video of Tatum playing Dvorak on YouTube, oh wow... what talent!

    They're both amazing!

  • bello!!!!!!!!!!

  • Well...get on UTube and clic on Marian Petrescu, please do this because I've listened to Oscar since about 1946 and Marian is the closest cat on that kind of piano living today!!

  • I first saw Oscar Peterson when I was 18 in the

    Navy at a club in Los Angeles - on the same

    bill (if you can believe it) with the Nat King Cole

    trio.

    Cover charge $ 8.00.

    In 1948.

    Stu Nichols

    Aspen, CO

  • i'm so envy at you..

    only 15,wish i had the chance to see all of those legends back at the times..

  • Those walking tenths. If only I had those size hands!!!

  • Comment removed

  • @yamaho5

    Try not to taint this wonderful music with your god-drivel.

  • NAJPIĘKNIEJSZA MUZYKA ŚWIATA !!!

  • Tastey Stuff Right There

  • Baba mucktananda left, osho, r!

  • nuts

  • Lookit Neils. He's into it. And you know he knows his shit like no one else.

  • human spirit as its finest

  • Pure Genius!!!

  • Absolute Mastery! Please check out another musical legend, at the only official Ahmad Jamal page on YouTube. ~ Thanks!

  • He's a beast

  • Left Hand Jesus Christ and Right Hand Baghavan Chrisna. Cheers ; )

  • haha :)

  • jesus christ left hand jesus christ

  • Virtuosity..exquisite playing,genious,delicate,sensi­tive,brilliant,charming,flows,­majorly charming,witty..he's got AND does it all!xx

  • I like how at 1:54 he grabs the towel while he's doing that run with his right hand

  • Love it !

  • listen to keith jarrett doing it

  • oscar peterson recorded waltz for debbie as did ahmed jamal,don sebesky and bill evans had more than one version .

  • Have to say this is a little 'overcooked' for my taste also, well the 1st half of the tune anyway. Having said that, if i had the dexterity & ability to pull off those amazing runs I'd probably be dropping them at the end of every melody line too! The man was truly one of a kind.

  • he was at peak right here. in the zone. this is my guy!

  • Man... his rendition is wonderful!

  • wow! fascinante!

  • Great composition

    Great Performance

    I've studied there it's a beautiful hall to give a concert

  • Oscar sublime technique makes me wonder how thats performed with only 10 fingers.

  • Oscar didn't like Thelonious Monk's playing, but he said he was a great composer. It's not very usual to hear him playing a Monk's tune, and Oscar Peterson playing Round Midnight is probably the most beautiful thing the human be will ever hear. We can realize he is playing tunes from his contemporary pianists Monk and Evans, the three very different between. I never heard Monk or Evans playing a Peterson's tune, maybe because his not tunes are not as well known as the others.

  • I just can't see how this could be considered more beautiful than what Monk did with his own piece. That beauty lies in the space he places between the notes. This is all too wanky for my liking. That's not to say Peterson is anything less than a master of the art, he's just overcooking it a little here.

  • well then this song sounds good 'overcooked'

  • I agree with you; Monk's silences are very beautiful too, but I still prefer Peterson. This is because I like Peterson's style, and the way he plays this tune. This doesn't mean I don't like Monk's; actually I love Monk's too.

  • i like both, they are totally different and seem to put me in different moods... both got skill

  • jonescrusher, I couldn't agree more.

  • Oscar gr8 fingers!!! at 3:30 i'd get my orgasm...

  • u can have mine .... if u want

  • When he goes into stride on Waltz for Debby, it sounds as if the guitar and bass are playing with him! Obviously they're not, but its what he did with his left hand that really made him stand out.

  • That's because he plays in another kind of stride, he makes the bass line changes and he turns back to the middle of the keyboard for the rest of the chord. That's very amazing.

  • When he plays like Tatum it gives me goosepumps. It's like he's channeling Tatum's soul.

  • deux standard du jazz ,deux façons magistrales de les jouer ....

    du grand Peterson !

    une leçon de piano !

  • great musician, best I've ever seen

  • lovely guy. beautiful version

  • ...even if he died 3 years later, he should be from above :)

  • I hope that Bill was proud of this version of Waltz for Debby (...)

  • probably would be... but he was dead in 1980

  • R.I.P. Oscar

  • here's Oscar's soul visible

  • hes so fucking fast man...its just impossible to follow his fingers with your eyes

  • even more impossible trying to follow art tatum

  • Eyes or mind

  • Oscar Peterson, together with Art Tatum, are the two old grand masters of the jazz piano. Thanks for this video.

  • We're in the same way

  • He should win an Oscar for his pianoplaying!

  • Is it possible to talk about at least ONE YouTube video of a jazz master without letting the conversation drop to the level of comparing the titans, and for no reason other than to claim that one is closer to your ideal of jazz than another?

    I, for one, think it's remarkable that Oscar is able to take tunes by Monk and Evans - two very post-stride pianists - and work them plausibly back into the melodically virtuosic, harmonically unambiguous Art Tatum style.

  • You are right ..reduce to a horse racing

  • with all do respect for the master, i take evans playing this any day and night..im so sick and tired of this technical fast scales chromatic scales and arpgeios..to play something like walts for debby requiers something from the inside not from the outside..

  • Bill Evans does some incredible things on this tune, but it is unfair to say that what Oscar is doing is for show. Oscar himself said that he was hearing all of these fast things in his head, so he practiced 8 hours a day in order to build the facility to make what he was hearing on the INSIDE audible for other people. Where Bill Evans' musical soul hears the lush harmonies and singable lines, Peterson hears those scales you're talking about (few if any are simply "chromatic" by the way).

  • Bill Evans does some incredible things on this tune, but it is unfair to say that what Oscar is doing is for show. Oscar himself said that he was hearing all of these fast things in his head, so he practiced 8 hours a day in order to build the facility to make what he was hearing on the INSIDE audible for other people. Where Bill Evans' musical soul hears the lush harmonies and singable lines, Peterson hears those scales you're talking about (few if any are simply "chromatic" by the way).

  • peterson is a great pianist as i said, but sometimes 2 notes can be more powerful..i guess he's just jot my taste anymore..

  • i understand what you mean. I still think this performance is amazing bt not comparing as such i would listen to a softer (Bill evans) performance just because thats what i like. No offence to either pianists.

  • what?..i only responded to tejerajazz which said tatum and ptereson are the greatest of all time. u got confused i think..

  • that comment was supposed to be a reply to your comment ''peterson is a great pianist as i said, but sometimes 2 notes can be more powerful..i guess he's just not my taste anymore..''

  • Oh ok, well ye its a good performance, but i dont like petereson anymore..

  • I think we're confusing our Gils with our Bills here - Gil being an inspirational arranger and architect behind 'Miles Ahead'. As regards Bill and Oscar, any comparisons are futile. We may as well compare Mozart with Bach! Just enjoy.

  • Gil Evans in no way came close to Oscar Peterson. Oscar Peterson's improvisational, harmonic,and melodic vision is light years from that of Gil Evans. If you listen, Gil pays homage to Oscar by giving the average listener something to hold on to and expanding Oscars linear genious into chordal passages that can be easliy heard and digested. there are a lot of things you can credit Gil Evans for in the Mainstreaming of Jazz (Same as Burt B. and Pual D.) but be serious.....

  • Bill Evans was a different player,,,he is my favorit..Because of taste. Players this greate can not be compared. Evans was not a very fast player,and never tryed to,,so wat!!! wat is speed??? There is nobody like Bill Evans,,,and nobody like Oscar Peterson

  • peterson was without doubt the better pianist in terms of technique, but it isnt only about technique, evans took the piano into a different dimension because of his views on harmonisation, a lot of these ideas were taken from the impressionistic composers, debussy and ravel

  • No harm in pointing to "differences"

    in style and, particularly, in the way a ballad is expressed in an emotional context.

    Peterson was unquestionably the most technically accomplished jazz pianist besides

    Tatum and Jarrett, but none are

    as expressive as e,g, Garner and Petruccini.Similarly we have vocalists

    with magnificent voices e.g. Fitzgerald and Vaughan but the more expressive Holiday, Simone, Krall and Kent. Peterson had no need to -but seemed addicted to mimicking Tatum runs.

  • Man,you make my night,thank you so much,that's hight graduate school !:) +image quality :-)

  • Hahaha, I really had to laugh while watching it, it's so cool. The two versions show perfectly the difference between the two guys, and I even dare to say the difference between a black pianist and a white pianist. The black pianist is more rhythm and groove-orientated, where the white player focuses more on subtle harmonic colours and less on sheer technique. One isn't better then the other, they're just different.

  • knock off the racist shit. Oscar ?eterson is (and were) amazing!

  • you people are morons for arguing this...they both had two completely different takes on music....oscar was fast and you could hear the stride influence where bill embraced his classical schooling....big deal they were both absolutely amazing. Black, white..who gives a shit? Miles and Bill both didn't care..Jazz was about music, not race.

  • I agree that its pointless to argue about who's better at what, mainly because REAL musicians don't talk crap about each other, they encourage each other in their musical endeavors. Period.

  • 뿅

  • you guys are arguing an pointless argument. They were both outstanding. They were both into different styles of jazz. Listen to all of Bil's records before you talk him down. His has the most delicate sound out there. Sure Peterson could play scales at a rapid fire pace but who cares. It's like saying Jim Hall sucks at the guitar because he's slow and saying Slash is better than him for playing faster. It makes no sense haha.

  • Playing music is not a Olympic discipline, I find even Music competitions for school music absurd. What enchanting music was ctreated by the MJQ with a minimum of virtuosity.!!

  • YOU are the one comparing races. I too have enjoyed listening to Oscar more than Bill. Yet, that's an overgeneralization to say ALL "white folks" compare "blacks". You seem to have a stereotype against "whites" but not ALL "whites" are the same. EVERYONE's genetic code is unique, not just people of different races. Someone's "race" can be a tragic oversimplification for comparing ALL humans.  Likewise, Bill is better at piano than many blacks too but I woudn't say it's because of his race.

  • thats far from true... in fact, evans took jazz piano further than peterson ever did... it was bill evans use of harmony in the 60's that changed jazz piano... use of modal fourths harmonies, phyygian chords; peterson heard this and learnt it, developed it, played it, but it wasnt him who invented it

  • It is said that Evans played all the same things as Tatum, but he did it slower. I find this true, and study his works myself. You can spend a year listening to one Oscar Peterson tune, and still not know what he's doing due to the speed, same with Tatum, but Evan's is slower, thus easier to analyse. I won't say that Evans' music is shaudy, but I do believe Peterson to be the better player. Tatum was likely the originator of alot of what both of them play. They're all brilliant though.

  • i would have to disagree here, i think evans is far more difficult to analyze; he used very complex harmonies at times; i said this before and its a fact, it was evans in the 60's that changed the face of jazz piano and that was because of his use of piano voicing; i'm a big peterson fan but during his whole career he never once pushed the boundaries of jazz, his playing - though amazing - was never revolutionary

  • The persuit of placing one member of jazz piano royalty above or ahead of another is a misguided mission. Oscar Peterson considered himself the dutiful successor of the James P. Johnson/Fats Waller/Art Tatum legacy of rent- party stride virtuosi. Bill Evans had entirely different goals. He was a clever classico-jazz alchemist who spent his life trying to blend Debussy with Bud Powell, Ravel with Monk. You can't compare the worth of two men when both are sailing for completely different harbors.

  • why dont you actually read what i wrote...??? all you have done is repeat what i have said but turned it round... i say again, peterson was the better pianist in terms of technique, there is no question of that, but like i said, it is not only about technique

  • Theyre differen't.....they both kick ass....why compare?

  • dude I'm black(technically brown), and I dont really care what color you are....if you can play you can play! Oscar and Bill are the titans of the piano, they have proven they can master all types of styles, (classical, jazz, etc). So as a real musician, as valvetrom said, you can't keep score on music. There's no scoreboard, its not basketball. I find these competitions stupid as well my brother, just sit back and enjoy the music. Be inspired.

  • there only appears once or twice in ones life a keyboard genious such as oscar. if you play,you sit in awe when he plays. you can't believe a mind can do what he does with his. at least we still have recordongs of his talent.

  • i can't find on youtube my favourite classical composition weetland by oscar peterson. that's pity..

  • Dude! Oscar wiped his sweat during a right hand solo figure. This miniscule feat bespeaks the greatness of musical athleticism. I love how these cats were so hot and remained so into their legendary years. The true Jazz piano greats dont just have followers, they have parishoners!

  • Oscar and Bill were Gods.

  • Don't forget Art Tatum & Fats Waller!

  • i'm lovin da musik!!!! i've been playin keyboard for a few years and i arrange a little. does anyone have any ideas as far as how and what to practice...what are the great books and dvd's related to piano and keyboard....what are the great bands (any genre)...should i focus on becoming good at reading sheet music... anything that's going to help me grow musically ( even different ideas from the questions that i posted) i'm open to.

  • The beautiful thing about music and the arts is the versitality of it, because of the vastness of possibilities, every innovator has their respective discoveries of the musical 'universe'. Artists will never be proven better than one another because every discovery or innovation has its own special characteristics that make it what it is. This is why arguing who was the better between Bill and Oscar is futile. Perhaps we should forget this fruitless debate and enjoy the product of their genius.

  • Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson were both great players you can't take away anything from either I bet they had great respect for each other.

  • Muy diferentes pero definitivamente Bill Y Oscar son los mejores pianistas que ha dado el jazz, pero alguna vez Bill Evans toco algun tema de Oscar Peterson?

  • Que yo sepa no, además Bill evans "no era bueno" tocando swing, cosa que Peterson dominaba a cualquier tiempo y encima siendo capaz de crear lirica en los solos relanpagos que hacia. Así que supongo que no querría tocar temas de Oscar (el señor Bill)

  • No comments on the video.

    Oscar was a man who could hug a 95 yr. old

    woman and make her feel 30. Besides' who else can hit at least six octives at one time.

    Miss you O.P.

  • Rest in peace, ol' warrior.

    If I would try to summon up and define just one important memory of my first struggeling steps into the vast world of music, it would definitely include Oscar... Thank you for the music.

    Somehow I just have to cope with the fact that he's gone. Now he's jamming with guys like Bach, Miles davis and Sonny Stitt...

    Nevertheless, his music still ringers on.

    Glad to have met you, Mr Peterson.

  • I'm a student(A JAzz Studies Major) Piano is my principal instrument. both bill and Oscar are absolute Masters of the instrument, each just has a different focus that touches us differently. Bill has amazing emotional content in his music and ridiculous harmonic knowledge while Oscar is virtually un matched as far as speed and tech. It would be ignorant to say oscar couldn't play with as much emotion as Bill or the Bill Couldn't play as technically as Oscar....Just different voices that all

  • I think the great difference between Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson is how they make you feel.

    Evans' playing on Blue in Green is probably the most beautiful pieces of piano playing to ever be recorded - it makes my throat dry up.

    When I listen to Peterson playing, however, I can't stop smiling and moving!

    Both geniouses, and it seems futile to argue over their playing when you should be enjoying it!

  • Oscar gets to your heard,Bill to your mind.

    What is "better"?

  • both are cool

  • nah i would say the other way round personaly- this is not what i would call heart felt music, but has its merits intelectually (i suppose). evans is heart felt always

  • No musician is perfect, even Bill. I am amoung his biggest fans but there were a few recordings where I feel he connected less than others, as for Oscar take a listen to "the jazz soul of Oscar peterson" In that recording there's enough heart and soul and then some! Other than that, I'm in no position to say who you should or should'nt like.

  • The soul if you will, is in the Phrasing and the Accents, the softness fo some notes he was just so technically advanced that it sounds like there is a formula to this but in kansas City, this man would run the corresponding scale to the chords in every key?!

  • don't try to find a small fault with his playing. that is part of jazz...

  • I am a real OP fan, but I somehow agree that Waltz for Debby missed the sparkle of his original recording in 1964. He even made some blemished "mistakes", sorry variations which are not like Oscar at all.

  • I don't think you can compare Bill Evans to Oscar Peterson in terms of "one is better than the other". They were entirely different players, both brilliant.

  • I agree.

  • i bet monk would shrink after hearing this version of his composition . hehehehehehe

  • Evans said that Peterson was the greatest.

  • So did Duke Ellington.

  • bill was gracious

  • source? I never heard or read that anywhere

  • oscar was in his own class but so where they i will miss him

  • ok the best is between bill evans and art tatum. everyone took from tatum including Oscar. Hes a nasty best tho, he takes you to church every time rip man

  • Bill Evans lol. He's not even on the list. Tatum is unquestionably the most technically proficient of them all. My favorite is Oscar cuz he could put it all together. I have a play list of Bill Evans which I play from time to time so I know whereof I speak. He is good but thats about it.

  • WOW how dare you speak of Evans in that mannor lol Bill is like Bach, Tatum, peterson, MONK combined.

  • Those four cats you mentioned are like god. I love em all. Ehh. I guess I'm just not that big a Bill Evans fan :-(/

  • bud powell said the only pianists worth listening to were tatum, monk and bill evans.

  • bill evans is the best...he took jazz to the level of science, no one was as ambidextrous or as rich in his playing as bill was. bill didn't need flash or to play a 1000 notes a second, he was complex. all music theoriests know this

  • yes, "music theorist" always knows best! after all they are theorist--talker not a doer. musicality is a complex subject to be captured in theorist/scholarly opinions(valuable reference) yes, bill had complex, rovolutionary, inventive, almost scheonbergian harmonic vocab in his music. but thalk about spontaneous liveliness in rhythms and roundedness/ warmth in tones. "art" in greek means technique. in broad sense, there's no boundary bet tech and artistry fan of bill& oscar,&pinist

  • i'm not too sure what ur point is, but Bill is the best as he was the innovator, not to take away from Oscar however

  • I would probably agree with you - Evans was the all round best jazz pianist ever. Nobody but nobody swung like Peterson though ...

  • Genius.

  • Oscar and Liszt are perhaps the greatest pianists of ALL Time !

  • Tatum and Rachmaninof