"I don't believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos"
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Oscar Peterson draws a line between fleeting popularity and enduring art, measuring music not by its momentary buzz but by its ability to live across generations. Naming Coleman Hawkins and Brahms plants a flag in two traditions that have proved their staying power: jazz and classical. Hawkins, whose Body and Soul solo became a touchstone for improvisers, exemplifies how a performance can keep yielding insight, inspiration, and pleasure decades after its debut. Brahms concertos, with their architectural solidity and emotional depth, continue to invite new interpretations from performers and listeners. The common thread is durability born of craft, complexity, and humanity.
The phrase on the air points to a media landscape driven by novelty and rotation, where songs are commodities and attention is the currency. Peterson, a virtuoso pianist grounded in rigorous technique and harmonic sophistication, suggests that much radio fare lacks the structural richness that invites return visits. Music that endures typically offers layers: melodies that sing, harmonies that surprise, rhythms that breathe, and forms that sustain fresh readings. Both Hawkins and Brahms wrote and performed within frameworks that reward deep listening and reinterpretation, which helps explain their longevity.
There is also a comment about community and repertoire. Jazz standards and classical concertos survive because musicians keep them alive on bandstands and concert stages, testing themselves against them, dialoguing with the past. If a piece does not invite that conversation, it is less likely to remain in circulation once its novelty fades.
Peterson is not simply dismissing the new. He is asserting a criterion. Time is the sternest critic, and the works that outlast trends tend to marry technical mastery with emotional truth. The challenge, implied rather than scolded, is for contemporary creators to aim for that mix of substance and soul that lets music become more than a hit, becoming instead a companion across a lifetime.
The phrase on the air points to a media landscape driven by novelty and rotation, where songs are commodities and attention is the currency. Peterson, a virtuoso pianist grounded in rigorous technique and harmonic sophistication, suggests that much radio fare lacks the structural richness that invites return visits. Music that endures typically offers layers: melodies that sing, harmonies that surprise, rhythms that breathe, and forms that sustain fresh readings. Both Hawkins and Brahms wrote and performed within frameworks that reward deep listening and reinterpretation, which helps explain their longevity.
There is also a comment about community and repertoire. Jazz standards and classical concertos survive because musicians keep them alive on bandstands and concert stages, testing themselves against them, dialoguing with the past. If a piece does not invite that conversation, it is less likely to remain in circulation once its novelty fades.
Peterson is not simply dismissing the new. He is asserting a criterion. Time is the sternest critic, and the works that outlast trends tend to marry technical mastery with emotional truth. The challenge, implied rather than scolded, is for contemporary creators to aim for that mix of substance and soul that lets music become more than a hit, becoming instead a companion across a lifetime.
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| Topic | Music |
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