When you operate a backpackers inn in Toronto’s Entertainment District, you never know who you might run across during the course of a day.
We met a lone traveler the other day who described himself as a “Keyboard Player” from Richmond Virginia.
Really? A keyboard player? I suppose that’s true. The same way you might call Issac Stern a “fiddler” or Wynton Marselis a “horn player”.
It turned out that James Pettis, our self-decribed “keyboard player”, is actually an internationally acclaimed classical pianist (and an altogether pretty remarkable human being.)
He is a multi-award winning pianist and even won a Virginia State University competition while still a high school student. He then attended the famous Julliard School in New York City on a scholarship.
He’s been a solo classical performance artist for over half a century and was recently the recipiant of the E. Azailia Hackley Award in Detroit Michigan. The awards and honours still continue today and he has even received an NAACP Freedom Award.
This multi-faceted performer even had a recurring role on the long running soap opera “The Guiding Light” as, you guessed it, a piano player.
He was in Toronto for a single performance at St. Paul’s Trinity Church where he played classical selections from Bach, Beethoven, Lizst and Rachmaninoff, as well as some Gospel Music of his own arrangement and even some Scott Joplin ragtime.
He’s due to return to Toronto in the Spring for another concert. He has promised to keep in touch with us and we will gladly post a notification of his future performances here in our city.
We attended his musical evening last night and his virtuosity made it hard for us to believe that he only has ten fingers.
