How Oliver Jones Carried Montreal Jazz History Forward | The Main

In the summer of 2024, a few weeks before his 90th birthday, Oliver Jones returned to the Montreal International Jazz Festival and sat down at a piano. He chose Hymn to Freedom, the composition by Oscar Peterson. It would be Jones’s final appearance at the festival, speaking through the work of another pianist that was shaped by the same few blocks of Little Burgundy.

Jones died in Montreal on July 22, 2026 at 91. The record of his life is imposing with more than 20 albums, two Junos, several Félix awards, international tours, university teaching posts, and civic honours such as Commander of the Ordre de Montréal in 2016. But his importance to Montreal cannot be measured by the length of that list. Jones gave the city’s jazz history continuity, having absorbed a musical culture built in churches, living rooms, community halls and nightclubs, carried it onto stages around the world, and returned to the new generation of musicians that would follow.

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