Oscar Peterson Centenary Tribute: Triology Plays Peterson

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VIFF celebrates Oscar Peterson’s centenary with an evening of Canadian jazz and Canadian film. Triology — featuring Jodi Proznick (bass), Bill Coon (guitar) and Miles Black (piano) — pays tribute to the legendary Oscar Peterson with a swinging, heartfelt celebration of his music and legacy. Experience the joy, virtuosity, and spirit of one of Canada’s greatest jazz icons, reimagined by three of the country’s top jazz artists. Triology’s performance will be followed by a screening of Begone Dull Care, Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart’s ecstatic, excitable and effervescent 1949 drawn-direct-on-film animated short bounces along to twenty-four-year-old Oscar Peterson’s trio playing his original composition. The program concludes with a screening of the director Daryl Duke’s 1978 Canadian thriller The Silent Partner starring Elliott Gould, Christopher Plummer, and Susannah York and featuring Peterson leading a septet performing his original soundtrack.

This event is co-presented with our friends at Legstand

Biographies:
Triology is a supergroup of three award winning Canadian jazz musicians – Jodi Proznick on bass, Miles Black on piano and Bill Coon on guitar. They have joined forces to form one of Canada’s finest jazz trios. Formed in 2008 and fashioned after the great early jazz trios of Nat King Cole and Oscar Peterson, they perform wonderful impromptu arrangements of classic standards and original tunes. All three members of Triology have won numerous accolades over the years including JUNO nominations, National Jazz Awards, Galaxie Rising Star Awards and Western Canadian Music Awards and have shared the stage with jazz legends such as George Coleman, David “Fathead” Newman, Ed Thigpen, Clark Terry, Max Roach, Sheila Jordan and Harry “Sweets” Edison. The Slow Road, Triology’s latest recording featuring Scott Hamilton is available on Cellar Music.

Bill Coon (guitar) — an amazing and fluid guitarist, originally from Montreal, Bill has over 25 years professional experience and has multiple awards and JUNO nominations. He has worked with many jazz greats, including Jimmy Heath, Eddie Daniels and Dr. Lonnie Smith and

Jodi Proznick (bass) — An award-winning bassist, Jodi has become one of Canada’s “top call” artists. Jodi leads her own quartet, and is a member of many jazz ensembles, such as the Tilden Webb Trio, Raagaverse, the Ostara Project and O Come All Ye Soulful featuring Dawn Pemberton. Some of the legendary talents she has accompanied: George Coleman, David Fathead Newman, Ed Thigpen, Charles McPherson, Mark Murphy, Lewis Nash, Harold Mabern and Sheila Jordan.

Miles Black (piano) — with over 30 years’ experience, Black is a highly accomplished pianist and composer who has performed worldwide and recorded extensively. Miles has worked with many jazz greats, including Max Roach, Lew Tabackin, Houston Person and Harry “Sweets” Edison.

About The Silent Partner (1978, 108 min)

Vancouver’s own Daryl Duke scored a cut hit with this ingenious 1978 heist movie, set in Toronto at Christmas, and starring Elliott Gould and Christopher Plummer. The former plays a bank teller in the Eaton Centre. Held up by a robber disguised as Santa, he opportunistically pockets tens of thousands of dollars for himself, thus earning the enmity of a psychotic Santa (Christopher Plummer of course) who is determined to get back what’s “rightfully” his…

Scripted by Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential) based on a Danish crime novel by Anders Bodelsen, and with an original soundtrack by Oscar Peterson, the film’s moral criss-cross is patterned after Hitchcock, but may also have a little something to say about US-Canadian relations. Among the Canadian supporting cast, look out for an early role for the young John Candy.

Oscar Peterson composed over half an hour’s original music for the film, and recorded it with such luminiaries as Benny Carter, Zoot Sims, Clark Terry, Milt Jackson, John Heard and Grady Tate.

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The Silent Partner comes with the highest of recommendations. As a thriller it’s an all-time great… one of the greatest thrillers I’ve ever seen: it forces us to reckon with matters of conscience, morality, and our nascent capability to go down dark paths at the blink of an eye.

Ed Travis, Cinapse

An uncommonly clever and gripping suspense thriller.

Gary Arnold, Washington Post

A small miracle, worthy of Hitchcock… What we’re left with is a small but wonderful gem of a thriller: A film in which complicated people and a very complicated plot come together in a mechanism that leaves us marveling at its ingenuity.

Roger Ebert