A Tribute to Oscar Peterson Andrew Litton

• 1 Lulu's Back In Town 02:14
• 2 'Round Midnight 06:31
• 3 Body and Soul 05:37
• 4 A Child Is Born 03:09
• 5 Jumbo: Little Girl Blue 06:27
• 6 Take the A Train 02:50
• 7 Basin Street Blues 04:42
• 8 Rosalie: How Long Has This Been Going On? 06:05
• 9 The Nearness of You 03:27
• 10 Over the Rainbow 02:35
• 11 Things Ain't What They Used to Be 03:05
• 12 Perdido 07:19
• Total Runtime 54:01

Info for A Tribute to Oscar Peterson

On his 16th birthday, receiving an LP of Oscar Peterson playing solo, Andrew Litton was ‘hooked’, to use his own term: ‘If I’ve ever experienced anything close to an epiphany, this was it!’ Having had opportunities to hear pianists such as Horowitz, Rubinstein, Richter and Gilels in recital, he was struck by Peterson’s playing: ’the amazing colours and voicing, the feathering of the sustain pedal (only Horowitz had such an astonishing pedal technique!), the achingly beautiful original harmonies…’

Collecting all of Peterson’s recordings and seeking out opportunities to hear him live and meet him in person, over the years Litton realized that the admiration he felt was shared by many of the classical musicians that he met during his ‘day job’ as a conductor. When he started to come across transcriptions of Peterson’s improvisations made by such musician friends, Litton began collecting and learning them himself. He started with one of his personal favorites, Richard Rodgers’ Little Girl Blue, using it as an encore when making appearances as a pianist – he even played it at a memorial service for his late mother. As he kept learning new improvisations, what Litton himself describes as ‘a dream’ took shape – to record his own performances of some of these transcriptions as a tribute to his hero. Litton’s selection includes twelve classic songs from recordings spanning four decades, from Thelonius Monk’s ‘Round Midnight and Billy Strayhorn’s Take the ‘A’ Train to Thad Jones’ A Child is Born, and his preparations for this very special recording have if anything deepened his admiration for Peterson: ‘He did things daily at the piano while spontaneously improvising that the rest of us spend a lifetime trying to achieve.’

„An accomplished and classical pianist in his own right, Litton connected with not just the technique but with the vivid colors presented in Peterson’s harmonic soul. A Tribute to Oscar Peterson is a stirring improvisational riff on the man, the music and his indelible mark on the music world. The tunes are here but expected and somewhat eclectic and this is what makes the release special. Solo piano as a tribute to Oscar Peterson kicks it up a notch. Andrew Litton pulls it off with style, flair and a harmonic reach not as an imitation but as his own riff on the master. That is why this release works so well, it is from the heart.“ (Brent Black, CriticalJazz)

„Teeming with the torrents and cascades of swirling sound that were Peterson's trademark, the amazing double-handed runs and tremolos that leave the listener gasping.“ (BBC Music Magazine)

Andrew Litton, piano

Recorded on November 2012 at Potton Hall, Suffolk, England
Produced and engineered by Ingo Petry

Andrew Litton
Music Director of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Artistic Director of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest, and Conductor Laureate of Britain’s Bournemouth Symphony, recently also became Music Director of the Colorado Symphony. He guest conducts the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies and has a discography of over 120 recordings with awards including America’s Grammy, France’s Diapason d’Or, and many British and other honors.

First appointed Bergen Philharmonic Music Director in 2003, Litton will celebrate the orchestra’s 250th Anniversary in 2015. It is one of the world’s longest established orchestras. In recognition of Litton’s achievements with the Bergen Philharmonic, Norway’s King Harald knighted Litton with the Royal Order of Merit. Under Litton the Bergen Philharmonic has taken numerous tours, including debuts at the London BBC Proms and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, as well as appearances at Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin’s Philharmonie, and New York’s Carnegie Hall - the capstone of its first American tour in 40 years. Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic record for the BIS and Hyperion labels, winning extraordinary critical acclaim for their Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev series.

After opening the 2013-14 season in Bergen and Denver, Litton returns to the orchestras of Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, the English Chamber Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony, and the Bournemouth Symphony. He also leads the Royal Philharmonic on tour to Bucharest. His calendar includes debuts with the Singapore Symphony and the National Taiwan Symphony.

After collaborating in his student days as piano soloist with the legendary Rudolph Nureyev and Natalia Makarova, Litton returns to ballet to conduct the New York City Ballet’s new production of Delibes Coppélia.

Conductor of many of the world’s top opera companies including the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Australian Opera, Litton participated with the Bergen Philharmonic in founding the Bergen National Opera. Now its Artistic Advisor, Litton has conducted critically acclaimed, sold-out performances of Tosca, Carmen, The Flying Dutchman, and La Bohème. This season he conducts a new production of Fidelio, directed by Oskaras Korsunovas.

An accomplished pianist, Litton often conducts from the keyboard and enjoys performing chamber music with his orchestra colleagues. Litton is recognized as an authority on Gershwin, having extensively performed and recorded as pianist and conductor Gershwin’s works in America, Asia and Europe. He led the Covent Garden premiere of Porgy and Bess and arranged his own concert Suite of that work now performed throughout the world. The University of Michigan has asked Litton to join a distinguished panel of Gershwin experts in developing a Critical Edition of all Gershwin works. Passionate about the music and playing of the late Jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, Litton just recorded his first solo piano album, a Tribute to Oscar Peterson, to be released this season.

Litton was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony from 1988-1994, bringing it on its first American tour and producing 14 recordings, including the Grammy winning Belshazzar’s Feast. Music Director of the Dallas Symphony from 1994-2006, he hired over one third of the players, led the orchestra on three major European tours, appeared four times at Carnegie Hall, created a children’s television series broadcast nationally and in widespread use in school curricula, produced 28 recordings, and helped raise the orchestra’s endowment from $19 million to $100 million. Litton’s Dallas Symphony Rachmaninov Piano Concerto recordings with Stephen Hough, widely hailed as the best since the composer’s own, won the Classical Brits/BBC Critics Award. Litton also received a Grammy nomination for his recording of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd with the New York Philharmonic and Patti Lupone.

Andrew Litton, a graduate of the Fieldston School, New York, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard in piano and conducting. The youngest-ever winner of the BBC International Conductors Competition, he served as Assistant Conductor at Teatro alla Scala and Exxon/Arts Endowment Assistant Conductor for the National Symphony under Rostropovich. His many honors in addition to Norway’s Royal Order of Merit include an honorary Doctorate from the University of Bournemouth, Yale University’s Sanford Medal, and the Elgar Society Medal.

Booklet for A Tribute to Oscar Peterson