The Osaka stop of the Oscar Peterson Centennial Quartet came courtesy of NACO, as the two ensembles played side-by-side.Curtis Perry/Supplied
The National Arts Centre Orchestra’s performance on June 6 in Osaka, Japan happened at the cross-section of three substantial cultural projects.
The venue they performed in, called The Shining Hat, is one of the many impressive structures erected at warp speed for Expo 2025 in Osaka, where 158 countries gathered to flex their cultural identity for approximately 25 million visitors. A second unrelated trajectory is the centenary of legendary Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, which is being celebrated throughout the year and all over the world by The Estate of Oscar Peterson; the jazz quartet that joined the National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO) for this performance is named after Peterson. The third and final trajectory that came together for this memorable concert experience is NACO’s Japan and Korea tour, a seven-city excursion that began in Busan, South Korea and ended in Osaka.
Through a fortuitous mix of coincidence and meticulous planning, NAC Orchestra at Osaka Expo – Celebrating Oscar Peterson was the summit of a musical moment that’s been years in the making.
The Osaka stop of the Oscar Peterson Centennial Quartet – a four-man Canadian band fronted by pianist Robi Botos – came courtesy of NACO, as the two ensembles played side-by-side for an indelible blend of the classical and jazz idioms that lend Peterson’s musicality its dexterity of moods and musical expressions.
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Nelson McDougall, managing director of NACO, and his team started planning this tour nearly three years ago. They realized early that it would fall on the centenary of one of Canada’s most celebrated and prolific cultural exports, and that they’d be routing it through a country where he’s still dearly beloved. All they needed was a venue that somehow tied everything together.
The Oscar Peterson Theatre in Tokyo would have been fitting – indeed, NACO organized a couple of short recitals there before coming over to Osaka. But the spectacle of Expo 2025 proved a more compelling context for showcasing their homage to a Canadian musical icon.
The NACO tour has featured appearances by established Canadian talents, from composers Kelly-Marie Murphy and Keiko Devaux to violinist Adrian Anantawan. Emerging homegrown talents have also been equally represented, including recent alumni from NACO’s mentorship program.
Standing out amongst this group is pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko, winner of the 2024 Leeds International Piano Competition. The 26-year-old Izik-Dzurko was the solo feature in the first half of the Celebrating Oscar Peterson program, a not-so-subtle nod by NACO regarding the trajectory they believe his career is following.
Izik-Dzurko’s countenance on stage is cool, calm and emphatic where needed. His performance in this program was both a homage to Peterson and a triumphant announcement of his own arrival.
The Oscar Peterson Centennial Quartet pianist Robi Botos, whom Peterson mentored, speaks from Osaka where they performed with the National Arts Centre Orchestra.
The Canadian Press
The selection of pieces showcased the pianist’s high level of comfort across styles. Izik-Dzurko began his musical conversation with the audience through Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita for keyboard No. 4. It was the musical equivalent of method acting as Izik-Dzurko lent his entire constitution to the delicate balance between the exactitudes of the Partita’s French and German characters, and the heavily ornamented flourishes that are in parts reminiscent of the colorful ostinatos (riffs) for which Peterson was famous.
Taking the audience through a journey narrating the development of the keyboard, Izik-Dzurko moved on to a pair of Preludes from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 23 (a set of 10 preludes for solo piano). In March, 2026, Izik-Dzurko will be taking the stage with NACO to perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.3, so this performance was an opportunity to preview his approach to this celebrated composer.
With Rachmaninoff, one needs to be strong and supple, stern and subtle; and by that register, Izik-Dzurko has found a way to channel strength without strain. This level of control will be important for a concerto that can at times feel like it’s written against the piano rather than for it.
Before closing out his part of the evening with a direct homage to Peterson, Izik-Dzurko performed Étude No. 12 in A-flat minor by another Canadian celebrity pianist, Marc-André Hamelin. Izik-Dzurko saved his best for last with Peterson’s Place St. Henri from the Canadian Suite album, a piece that captures the composer’s eclectic childhood neighourbood in Montreal with its swinging rhythm, which Izik-Dzurko took for a kinetic dance on piano.
Up till now, conductor Alexander Shelley and his orchestra (slimmed down for this jazz-friendly orchestration), and the Oscar Peterson Centennial Quartet, had been waiting in the wings. Without an intermission, the program continued into more than 70 minutes of the Peterson songbook, beginning with the towering Trail of Dreams: A Canadian Suite and ending with Hymn to Freedom. NACO commissioned special arrangements by the quartet’s bassist Mike Downes, a monumental undertaking that transformed the orchestra into a sort of boombox for the quartet’s intimate renditions.
NAC Orchestra at Osaka Expo – Celebrating Oscar Peterson was the summit of a musical moment that’s been years in the making.Curtis Perry/Supplied
The remarkable feature of this orchestration is how closely the orchestra was able to interact with the jazz idioms drawn up by Botos, Downes, Jim Doxas (drums), and Ulf Wakenius (guitar). It was especially impressive that there were several instances throughout this performance where the partitions between jazz and orchestral formulations completely disappeared, and the quartet and orchestra welded together to make music reflecting the manifold iterations of Oscar Peterson across his long and illustrious career.
The highlight of the evening was Hymn to Freedom (orchestrated by Montreal-based composer Chris LaRosa). The orchestra was joined on stage by members of Sistema New Brunswick, El Sistema Japan’s Tokyo Children’s Ensemble and Ottawa’s OrKidstra Music Ensemble – all of which provide children from equity-deserving communities to participate in music-making. It was a moment that seemed to rise above the evening’s programming. The children sang beautifully and, with Shelley’s guidance, projected clearly above the accompaniment and landed their cues with a great deal of cute.
Though the Canadian Pavilion is about a 10-minute walk from the concert venue, for the duration of this program, The Shining Hat housed the best export of Canadian cultural identity at Expo 2025.
