Virginia P B Foy

I was first exposed to jazz by my late, piano playing, airline pilot big brother John when I was about six years old. We had always been close (in honesty, I idolized him!) but due to an age difference of nearly 15 years, I didn’t get to see him much. I remember vividly his homecoming from a long stint flying at the DEW line on Baffin Island. While the rest of the family celebrated gifts of mukluks & Inuit carvings, he dragged me furtively to his bedroom suite, plopped me on the bed and said “So listen to this. I just picked them up in Vancouver.” It was Stan Kenton’s band. And as I review Kenton’s discography over the years, I’m pretty certain those hi-fi albums were “Contemporary Concepts” and “Kenton in HiFi.” Shortly after my bro’ left on another flying gig, I began classical piano lessons. By the time I was permitted to date, I chose boyfriends according to the jazz albums they owned. I’ll always remember my first, Lee Edwards, a preacher’s son, who gifted me with two Miles Davis albums: Milestones and Kind of Blue. I still have them and they are still playable. To this day, I haunt thrift stores and used record bins in search of those Kenton albums my brother played me.. Today, I still play, sing and write and am currently working on “Hymn for Lyle,” in memory of Pat Metheny’s iconic keyboardist Lyle Mays.