Oscar Peterson Remembered

Canadian jazz legend, pianist, composer, Grammy Award winner, humanitarian and Order of Canada recipient Oscar Peterson passed away on December 23. He was of 82.

The following are links to some articles and tributes to the great Mr. Peterson:

Oscar Peterson's website, containing news, biographical, band, journal, discography, photos, audios and more.
Wikipedia article on Oscar Peterson
CBC tribute to Oscar Peterson
The Press Association's article, Tributes Pour In for Oscar Peterson
Collections Canada website
The Toronto Star's memoriam
The Canadian Encyclopedia
Loss of a Legend - CTV Tribute

Video performances of Oscar Peterson:

Mirage
Greatest piano solo ever - the metronome can't go that fast
Oscar Peterson solo -post stroke, I think.

Scales Help at Scaleindex.com

I stumbled upon this site while trying to makes heads or tails out of the Lydian Dominant mode (jazz musicians are probably shaking their heads at this as they know very well what Lydian Dominant is). Scaleindex.com is a very thorough site, containing scale formulas, chord analyses, note names and audio clips of everything from our standard major and minor scales to the Bebop Dominant and Hindu scales.

My student R, who likes to compose, is excited about writing in some of these different keys while my student A is currently on a modal kick with her repertoire, so she is pumped about learning how to play modes. The funny thing is, neither student is in Conservatory Canada's Contemporary Idioms syllabus. Both girls are in the traditional stream of ConCan and RCM respectively.

As for my students who need to learn the Lydian Dominant mode for their Contemporary Idioms exam, they're just relieved to have the scale formula in an easy to understand format (as am I).

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