Oscar Peterson

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was born on 15 August 1925 in the Little Burgundy neighbourhood of Montreal, the fourth of five children. His father taught him to play. He studied with his sister Daisy, with the Hungarian classical pianist Paul de Marky, and with the jazz pianist Louis Hooper, and by the early 1940s he was a rising star in Montreal's thriving jazz scene.

In 1947 he was headlining Montreal's Alberta Lounge with his own trio, and his radio and record successes made him the first jazz star that Canada could truly call its own. The American impresario Norman Granz heard him and in 1949 introduced him at a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall in New York, which launched his international career.

From 1953 to 1958 the Oscar Peterson Trio, with Ray Brown on bass and Herb Ellis on guitar, was celebrated for its seemingly telepathic interplay. Peterson's dazzling technique earned him the nickname the man with four hands, and he became one of the most recorded jazz pianists in history, winning eight Grammy Awards.

In 1962 he composed Hymn to Freedom, with lyrics by Harriette Hamilton, inspired by the spirituals he had grown up hearing in Montreal's Black community. It became an anthem of the civil rights movement. His 1964 album Canadiana Suite showed his love for his own country, and he stayed rooted in Canada throughout his career.

A stroke in 1993 weakened his left hand, but he kept performing until 2006. He was chancellor of York University from 1991 to 1994, wrote an autobiography, A Jazz Odyssey, in 2002, and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1972 and a Companion in 1984. He was the first recipient of the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement and the first living person other than a monarch on a Canadian stamp. He died on 23 December 2007, at his home in Mississauga.