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| The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival |
In 1959, Duke Ellington was interviewed by the CBC to discuss his performance at the Stratford Music Festival in 1956. When asked about Shakespeare, the Stratford Festival and Jazz he responded, “Shakespeare’s a little beyond chronology… Shakespeare is down; he is dug by the craziest of cats” (The Stratford Festival: The First 50 Years). Ellington was, according to oral histories of people from that time in Stratford, often found in Festival rehearsal spaces, taking in rehearsals and mingling with theatre people generally—and of course composed music directly for the theatre as is documented elsewhere on the CASP site. His enthusiasm was mirrored by the Oscar Peterson Trio, which also performed at the Festival. On August 8th, 1956, the Oscar Peterson Trio, consisting of Montreal-born Oscar Peterson on piano, Herb Ellis on guitar, Ray Brown on bass, played an historic concert at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival. The performance was recorded and the album, The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival went on to become a best seller. The album was later celebrated in the Jazz Anthology, Jazz on Record 1917-1967, as the “group’s finest LP” (McCarthy, Albert J., 314). Oscar Peterson conceded in the liner notes of the original album, that it was his “best to date” (liner notes).
The Stratford Shakespearean Festival was established in 1953 by Tom Patterson. Throughout the years, it has grown to become on of the most prominent classical, Shakespearean theatrical festivals throughout Canada and internationally. There is, however, also a memorable musical history attached to the Festival. In 1953, Toronto-born composer and conductor, Louis Applebaum established the Stratford Music Festival, as a separate but complementary aspect to the theatrical festival. Poor attendance in the first two years, allowed Applebaum to make a fresh start in 1955 as they moved from the Tent Theatre to the Concert Hall, declaring 1955 ‘The Inaugural Season of Music’. The Festival Chorus, the Hart House Orchestra, and a performance of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale were a success. The 1956 season boasted a musical rendition of the Rape of Lucretia, and the beginning of three years of Jazz performances at the Festival, something often forgotten in the history of Stratford’s influence on Canadian culture. The period of 1956 to 1959 would bring some of the most influential and significant artists of the genre, such as the Oscar Peterson Trio, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, the Teddy Wilson Trio, and the Gerry Mulligan Quartet to the stages of Stratford, and would influence the already burgeoning Jazz scene in Canada.
Under the direction of legendary Canadian pianist, and regular Stratford Music performer, Glenn Gould, and Americans, Oscar Shumsky and Leonard Rose, concerts were performed at the large Festival Theatre, and stage productions of operas and musicals, such as The Pirates of Penzance (1961), The Gondoliers (1962), The Mikado (1963), and The Yeomen of the Guard (1964) were performed at the Avon Theatre. While, not always focused or based on Shakespeare, performances by groups like the Oscar Peterson Trio hold a notable significance as they helped form the basis of musical productions at Stratford, as well as the Stratford Summer Musical Festival, which was re-established in 2001, after musical direction fell by the wayside in the 1980s. Additionally, the musical performances held a much greater multicultural and diverse atmosphere, than the traditional theatrical productions of the 1950s and 60s. African-American performers, like Oscar Peterson, were celebrated on the musical stage in the 1950s, while it wasn’t until Djanet Sears’s production of Harlem Duet in 2006 that there would there be an all-Black cast on the Festival Theatre Stage. In the hundreds of musical performances since its inception in 1953, prominent and emerging musicians from Canada, as well as Austria, Cuba, Denmark, France, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Norway and the United States have been welcomed on the stage performing every type of music imaginable. This has created and continues to create a bountiful and important addition to musical culture in Canada. Additionally, the musical performances are held at a wide range of venues, both indoors and outdoors, and many are free, or pay-what-you-can, which solicit a much larger and diverse audience from that of the stage productions.
CASP is pleased to honour this musical history with some extracts from Peterson’s landmark trio performance at the Stratford Festival in 1956. Click on the links below to hear samples of this historic performance.
Danielle Van Wagner
Audio Clips:
The Oscar Peterson Trio: At the Stratford Shakespearean Festival
Verve Records, 1956
Disclaimer: This site has been designed with only non-commercial, academic uses in mind. Although every effort has been made to secure permission for materials uploaded on the CASP site, in some circumstances we have been unable to locate copyright holders. Links may be made to our site but under no conditions are the texts and images to be copied and mounted onto another site server. Researchers using the site should accredit it following standard MLA guidelines on how to do so. Correct citation of information from the site is as follows:
Fischlin, Daniel. Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project. University of Guelph. 2004. <http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca>.
