When Andy Milne was a student studying jazz at York University, one of his teachers offered some seemingly obvious advice: “Learn the song.”

It was in the mid-1980s, and Milne, who would go on to be a versatile and Juno-winning composer and jazz pianist, at first thought this guidance was a little flippant. But it was coming from the great Oscar Peterson, who would routinely toss out these sorts of pearls and spark some deep thinking in Milne about what he meant. Eventually, he realized Peterson was not being flippant or obvious.

“It was weeks later when it hit me what he meant,” says Milne, in an interview with Postmedia from his home in Ann Arbor, Mich. “It was much richer than that. I just found it fascinating, and, as a teacher myself now, I think back to him saying it literally and

See Full Page