Oscar Peterson

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.

I don’t do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less. If it sells one, it sells one.

I don’t do something because I think it’ll sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less if it sells just one.

Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

I’ve never thought the blues was a matter of copying other people. The blues singer should sing songs about his own life. And once the ball got rolling, I felt confident enough to do that as well as cover other people’s songs, and the tributes. You’ve got to think about representing your own life in the music, and for me that meant bringing in an element of jazz; I was brought up on jazz, it was my father’s work, it was in the house.

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

Good Jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms and yells. Fine Jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great Jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of Jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments.

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.

Wes Montgomery played impossible things on the guitar because it was never pointed out to him that they were impossible.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it.

Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.

I am only a mixture of countless influences and thanks to that I am able to find my own style of playing.

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.

Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.

People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.

Each time I have the opportunity to play, it’s another chance to tell the truth.