These artists will perform works by Oscar Peterson and others to be announced from the stage.
BENNY GREEN
CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE
LEWIS NASH
DAN WILSON
INTERMISSION
PETERSON
Africa Suite (arr. Clayton)
Night Cry
Ellington Looks at Africa
Night in Transvaal
Peace
Nigerian Marketplace
Tribal Dance
The Fallen Warrior
Soweto Saturday Night
Hymn to Freedom
Funding for educational programs during the 2024–25 Season of SCP Jazz has been generously provided by Dan J. Epstein, Judith Guitelman, and the Dan J. Epstein Family Foundation.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council.
Chicago Jazz, DownBeat magazine, WDCB 90.9FM Jazz, and WBEZ Chicago are media partners for this event.
Oscar Peterson’s Africa Suite
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson is one of the most prolific jazz pianists of all time, lending his name and talents to more than 500 recordings and earning eight Grammy awards (including Lifetime Achievement). Peterson was born in Montréal’s Little Burgundy, and his immense talent, fierce determination, and profound love for the art form caught the attention of jazz music’s greatest impresario and founder of Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP), Norman Granz. After accepting an invitation to perform as a surprise guest at a JATP show at Carnegie Hall at just twentyfour years old, Peterson would continue to tour with the group, performing with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Brown, Roy Eldridge, Herb Ellis, Clark Terry, Lester Young, and Louis Armstrong. Peterson’s global admiration and respect as a musician and humanitarian would later be recognized through various international honors, including Japan’s Praemium Imperiale World Art Award, UNESCO Music Prize, France’s Order of Arts and Letters, and sixteen honorary doctorates. His most cherished recognitions include Companion of the Order of Canada, Knight of the National Order of Québec, and Order of Ontario. Posthumously, Peterson was inducted into both the Canadian Songwriters and Canadian Music Halls of Fame and today is a permanent part of Canada’s history, with a statue in the nation’s capital (created by Ruth Abernethy), a Canada Post stamp,
murals, parks, and streets bearing his name. In 2022 a commemorative circulation coin in tribute to Peterson was issued by the Royal Canadian Mint.
The legacy of Oscar Peterson remains strong, with his music being taught in schools worldwide. Through the efforts of Kelly Peterson (the Estate of Oscar Peterson), there has been the release of several recording projects, including three never-before-heard archival concerts, the dynamic solo piano project Oscar, With Love (featuring sixteen internationally renowned pianists performing Peterson’s compositions in his home, on his beloved Bösendorfer Imperial piano), the completion and world premiere of the Africa Suite (featuring original arrangements by John Clayton), and several concerts in Canada and beyond. The Estate of Oscar Peterson proudly honors his life’s work and commitment to artistic excellence and, in 2025, will celebrate what would be his 100th birthday with a series of live concerts and exciting projects.
During the early 1980s, Oscar Peterson composed the Africa Suite, inspired partly by Nelson Mandela and the intense struggle for human rights in apartheid South Africa. As he completed the suite, he added three pieces to his concert repertoire: Nigerian Marketplace, Peace (written with great hope for South Africa), and The Fallen Warrior (written for and dedicated to the imprisoned Mandela), which were later incorporated into the suite. Fortunately, some of them were captured on live concert recordings, but the rest of the suite remained known only
to Peterson and the sound engineers who worked with him in his private studio while he was composing. (He loved using synthesizers for the wealth of instrumental sounds available at his fingertips. No pun intended.) These synthesizer tracks were recorded and the tapes carefully stored. Peterson, always looking forward, wrote more music, more than he would or could perform during his lifetime. He never performed the Africa Suite in its entirety.
Nearly forty years later, Kelly Peterson gave those rough synthesizer recordings to John Clayton, asking if he would arrange and conduct the suite. He agreed, and in February 2020, the world premiere of Oscar Peterson’s Africa Suite was presented in Toronto’s Koerner Hall with an all-star rhythm section (Benny Green, Christian McBride, Reg Schwager, and Lewis Nash) and an eighteen-piece specially curated Canadian jazz orchestra led by John Clayton. In June 2024, the suite had its U.S. premiere at SF Jazz’s Davies Symphony Hall in a concert celebrating Peterson’s music. Tonight’s concert marks the third performance of this remarkable work. —oscarpeterson.com
John Clayton Conductor
Bassist, composer, arranger, and producer John Clayton is a busy man. He is a Grammy Award winner with ten additional nominations and has written
and/or recorded with artists such as Milt Jackson, Diana Krall, Paul McCartney, Regina Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gladys Knight, Queen Latifah, McCoy Tyner, Yo-Yo Ma, and Charles Aznavour, to name only a few.
Clayton was the principal bassist of the Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (the Netherlands) from 1980 to 1984. In 1986 he cofounded the ClaytonHamilton Jazz Orchestra and rekindled the Clayton Brothers Quintet. In addition to his individual clinics and workshops, he also directs the educational components of Centrum, the Port Townsend Jazz Festival, and Vail Jazz Workshop.
Clayton’s arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner” helped propel Whitney Houston in her 1990 Super Bowl performance (the recording went platinum). His recordings with the Clayton Brothers, Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, Milt Jackson, Monty Alexander, Count Basie, and others are plentiful.
John Clayton says, “I’ve been guided by a village of musicians who helped me understand the humility that goes along with playing music at the highest level you can. Ray Brown used to tell me to ‘Learn how to play the bass!’ Just take care of the music, and it will take care of you.”
Benny Green Piano
Benny Green was born in New York City in 1963 and grew up in Berkeley, California. His father, who played the tenor saxophone, introduced him to jazz at an early age through his record collection that included Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, and Ray Charles. He began piano lessons at seven, and his first paid performance was at twelve. Green’s major concert stage debut was in 1978 at the Monterey Jazz Festival as a member of the MJF High School All-Stars (now known as the Next Generation Jazz Orchestra).
At sixteen, Green began performing regularly with the vocalist Faye Carol and, a year later, started gigging frequently in the San Francisco Bay Area with NEA jazz master trumpeter Eddie Henderson.
Green has toured and collaborated with Betty Carter, appearing on her Grammy Award–winning album, Look What I Got, and with the Freddie Hubbard Quintet, recording with Hubbard Live at Fat Tuesday’s.
In 1992 Oscar Peterson named Green his protégé and chose him as the recipient of the Glenn Gould Award for Excellence in Music and Communication. In 1998 Peterson and Green recorded the two-piano album, Oscar and Benny.
Green’s numerous albums as a sideman throughout the 1980s and ’90s include a duet with Diana Krall on her Grammy Award–winning album, All for You.
Green leads his own trio and, since 2014, has been recording for the Sunnyside label, releasing five albums to date. Since 2020 he has been focusing on solo piano performance and recording, with his most recent release, Solo
Christian McBride Bass
Christian McBride is a nine-time Grammy Award–winning bassist, composer, and bandleader. He is the artistic director of the historic Newport Jazz Festival, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and the TD James Moody Jazz Festival and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. McBride is also a respected educator and advocate as the artistic director of Jazz House Kids and the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Summer Sessions. In addition to consistent touring, he hosts The Lowdown: Conversations with Christian on SiriusXM and National Public Radio’s Jazz Night in America. Whether behind the bass or away from it, Christian McBride is always of the music. From jazz to R&B, pop/rock, hip-hop/neo-soul to classical, he is a luminary with one hand ever reaching for new heights and the other extended in fellowship—and perhaps the hint of a challenge—inviting us to join him.
Lewis Nash Drums
Lewis Nash is one of jazz’s most recorded musicians, appearing on over 500 recordings, including ten Grammy winners and numerous Grammy nominees. He is the only musician in jazz history to win the Best Jazz Vocal and Best Jazz Instrumental Album categories in two separate years: in 2004 with Nancy Wilson and McCoy Tyner and in 2010 with Dee Dee Bridgewater and James Moody.
A native of Phoenix, Arizona, Nash arrived in New York City in 1981 at age twenty-two and first gained international recognition as a member of vocalist Betty Carter’s trio. During this pivotal time in his development, he traveled the world with Carter for nearly four years.
In 2012 the Nash, a jazz education center and performance venue named in his honor, was established in his hometown of Phoenix. It has been a focal point of the city’s jazz activity since its inception and has been named consistently by DownBeat magazine as a top jazz venue. Jazz masters Randy Weston, Jimmy Cobb, and Roy Hargrove played some of the final performances of their careers at the Nash.
Lewis Nash is in great demand for his educational expertise, presenting clinics, master classes, and workshops at institutions worldwide. He was a member of the very first jazz studies faculty at the Juilliard School in 2001 and has been a member of the faculty of the annual Vail Jazz Workshop for the past twenty years.
In 2017 Nash joined the jazz studies faculty at Arizona State University, where he was named the Bob and Gretchen Ravenscroft Professor of Practice in Jazz. In early 2021, the Lewis Nash Scholarship Endowment was created by the university to be awarded annually to a deserving ASU undergraduate or graduate jazz performance student.
Growing up in Akron, Ohio, Dan Wilson spent most of his youth within his hometown church community, where his musical path began.
After graduating from Hiram College, Wilson made his recording debut with pianist Joe McBride and performed to worldwide acclaim with Joey DeFrancesco and Christian McBride’s Tip City, eventually recording his debut album as a leader, To Whom It May Concern.
Wilson has shared the stage with jazz greats Eric Marienthal, Russell Malone, Les McCann, René Marie, Jeff Hamilton, David Sanborn, and Dave Stryker.
He was invited to perform with Joey DeFrancesco’s trio quartet, with which Wilson earned a Grammy Award nomination for DeFrancesco’s album Project Freedom (Mack Avenue Records, 2017). This collaboration allowed the guitarist to insert his own dialect into the musical prowess and respect that DeFrancesco had earned throughout his journey.
Dan Wilson Guitar
Wilson had been playing with DeFrancesco for a few years when he met bassist, composer, and arranger Christian McBride. Wilson went on to tour with McBride’s trio, Tip City, eventually leading McBride to serve as producer on Vessels of Wood and Earth and release the album on his newly formed imprint, Brother Mister Productions, through Mack Avenue Music Group. The album was released in 2021 and is available on all platforms.
Chicago Jazz Orchestra
Cofounded in 1978 by Jeff Lindberg and the late Steve Jensen, the Chicago Jazz Orchestra (CJO) is the oldest continuously operating professional jazz orchestra in Chicago. Now in its fifth decade, the CJO is firmly established as the city’s premier professional jazz orchestra and one of the top repertory ensembles in the world. The CJO celebrates and perpetuates jazz orchestra music—an original American art form—for all audiences through performance, collaboration, and education.
When Jeff Lindberg and the late Steve Jensen first developed their big-band concept in 1978 (founded as the Jazz Members Big Band), they
could not have predicted that their group of first-call musicians would become the now-celebrated Chicago Jazz Orchestra, an organization that has garnered national and international recognition. Since its founding, the CJO has toured Europe twice and served as resident orchestra for the Kennedy Center Honors dinner in Washington (D.C.) for twenty-six consecutive years. Guest artists have included Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Slide Hampton, Quincy Jones, Joe Williams, and many others. The orchestra appears at venues and institutions across the Chicago metropolitan area, leading educational programs with students performing alongside CJO members, master classes led by renowned guest artists, and open rehearsals.
Jeff Lindberg, the CJO conductor and artistic director, is one of the world’s foremost jazz transcriptionists. His vast library, to which the CJO has unique access, includes works of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Benny Carter, Oliver Nelson, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, and many others. The CJO also performs compositions and arrangements by orchestra members, including trombonist Tom Garling. Loyal fans of the CJO are regularly treated to live performances of unique transcriptions, compositions, and arrangements that cannot be heard anywhere else.
The CJO’s album, More Amor—A Tribute to Wes Montgomery, featuring the brilliant jazz guitarist Bobby Broom, was released on March 28, 2025. Eight weeks after release, More Amor reached number one on the JazzWeek Jazz Chart.
Chicago Jazz Orchestra
Jeff Lindberg Artistic Director
WOODWINDS
John Wojciechowski Lead Alto Saxophone, Flute, and Clarinet
Rajiv Halim Alto Saxophone and Clarinet
Scott Burns Tenor Saxophone and Clarinet
Bill Overton Tenor Saxophone and Clarinet
Ted Hogarth Baritone Saxophone and Bass Clarinet
TRUMPETS AND FLÜGELHORNS
Roger Ingram Lead
Derrick Gardner
Pharez Whitted
Art Davis
TROMBONES
Steve Duncan Lead
Luke Malewicz
Raphael Crawford
Thomas Matta Bass
HORNS
Gregory Flint Lead
Emma Sepmeier
AFRICAN PERCUSSION
Xavier Breaker
Felix “D-Kat” Pollard
Funding for educational programs during the 2024–25 Season of SCP Jazz has been generously provided by
Dan J. Epstein, Judith Guitelman, and the Dan J. Epstein Family Foundation.
SYMPHONY CENTER PRESENTS
Jeff Alexander Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association President
Cristina Rocca Vice President for Artistic Administration
The Richard and Mary L. Gray Chair
James M. Fahey Senior Director, Programming, Symphony Center Presents
Lena Breitkreuz Artist Manager, Symphony Center Presents
Michael Lavin Assistant Director, Operations, Symphony Center Presents & Rental Events
Joseph Sherman Production Manager, Symphony Center Presents & Rental Events
