RIP, McCoy Tyner, who has died at the age of 81. This news hurts. I was lucky enough to see him perform three times, and met him once after a spectacular performance at the Purple Onion in Toronto in the early 1990s.
I have provide some context. My late friend, Bob Venn, was responsible for turning me on to jazz when I was in high school. He was a few years older than me and we had some shared interests: airplanes, space, and music. He was aslo a paraplegic; he'd been born with spina bifida and his legs didn't work. But he didn't let that stop him from becoming a radio DJ and almost a pilot (he would have done that if it hadn't been for Transport Canada). He was one of my closest friends, and in the early 90s I decided I'd give him a birthday treat - tickets to see McCoy Tyner at the Purple Onion in Toronto.
The performance was everything I could have hoped for. Three sets of beautiful, transcendent music. We had a table about 10 feet from his piano and I could feel his crashing left-hand chords in my chest. We stayed after it was over and talked to him briefly and shook hands; you could feel his spiritual power in his hands.
Bob died a year after that - victim of a fall when he was getting out of his car after a long drive. I lost a part of my life when he died, and I lost another part tonight, hearing of McCoy's death.
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