Julia Winston Ivey, on September 15, 2020, quietly passed away at her house on Parkland Drive in Lynchburg, Virginia. She was a remarkable musical talent, an internationally lauded pianist in her prime years, yet her death created only a small stir in Hill City and her funeral, at her gravesite, was sparsely attended. The irony of her hushed passing is that she was very likely the largest musical talent that Lynchburg has ever seen.
Though a small city, Lynchburg has always had an ear for music. It too has had several musicians of some distinction.[1]
There was first Blind Billy (c. 1805–1855), son of a slave, and freed in 1850. Though blind, Billy took up the fife as a boy and had an uncanny capacity to replicate any tune that he had heard. He so delighted Lynchburgers with his playing throughout his life that Senator John Warwick Daniel said after Billy’s passing, “‘Blind Billy’s fife was more melodious than the Aeolian Harp.”
Composer, folklorist, and singer Lucile “’Cile” Barrow Turner (1895–1979) was another noteworthy musician, who lived near Lynchburg. Turner travelled throughout the South and performed black folk music: spirituals, ballads, and blues. She gained local recognition in 1930 as the star of Craddock-Terry Company’s weekly programs on radio station NBC.
Other musicians of note are Rosa Kinckle Jones (1858–1932), a black music teacher who headed the music department of Hartshorn Memorial College for 40 years; blues guitarist Luke Jordan (1892–1952); rockabilly pioneer Zeb Turner (1915–1978); country singer Ray Pillow (b. 1937); Broadway star Carlton Earl Anderson (1945–2004); opera singer Roberta Alexander (b. 1949); folk singer Meg Christian (b. 1946); Broadway star (Guys and Dolls) Faith Prince (b. 1957); and country star Phil Vassar, Jr., (b. 1964).
Many of those names are familiar to Lynchburgers, but not that of Julia Ivey.
“Her new young student was too vulnerable”
Early Life and Introduction to Music
Julia Winston Ivey was born of Lynchburger William Maitland “Mait” Ivey (1894–1982) and Blacksburger Julia Price Ivey (1901–1990) on July 1, 1928. She had an older brother, William Maitland Ivey, Jr., who was some five years her senior, but he died in infancy in 1925.[2] Her name Winston came from an uncle, of whom Julia was especially fond, on her mother’s side.
Father Maitland studied chemical engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. While at school, his roommate introduced him to a Blacksburg woman named Julia Price. They were married on March 5, 1919. Nine years later, daughter Julia was birthed.[3] She would have no other siblings.
Born and raised in Lynchburg, Julia Ivey studied piano at the age of eight under the tutelage of Lynchburger Mary Elizabeth Pomeroy Graves. So taken was Graves by Ivey’s talent, enthusiasm, and temperament that Graves, upon her death in 1948, bequeathed her 1908 Steinway Grand Piano to her prized pupil.[4] At the time of her passing, the piano still sat in her former residence on Parkland Drive in Lynchburg. The house has since been sold.
Having matriculated at and graduated from Lynchburg’s E.C. Glass High School, Ivey left the city at 18 years of age to study music at the Philadelphia Conservatory under Olga Samaroff (formerly, Lucy Hickenlooper, 1880–1948) of the Julliard School of Music in New York, and under the sponsorship of Hans Hendrikus Philip Kindler (1892–1949), cellist and conductor/founder of the National Symphony Orchestra. Both quickly recognized the immensity of Julia’s talent, her interpretive genius, and her willingness to develop herself into a virtuoso. Said Judith Connell, “Her [Samaroff’s] new young student was too vulnerable to be subjected to The City’s [New York’s] ‘atmosphere’ and so, [Samaroff] encouraged her [Ivey] to stay, at least for a while in Philadelphia.” She would earn a bachelor’s degree at Philadelphia Conservatory, and later, a master’s degree from Philadelphia Music Academy.[5] Philadelphia would always be dear to Ivey—the city she most loved.
Under the expert patronage of Samaroff and Kindler, Ivey, still a teenager, flourished as an up-and-coming pianist. To further her career, they touted her and introduced her to celebrated European musicians on study tours as well as to significant music critics.[6] Ivey’s musical career, directed by two such musical stalwarts, was well on its way.
“Attention to the architecture of the music…”
Marriage, Divorce, and Musical Maturation
Ivey’s tutorial would quickly end. Samaroff died in 1948; Kindler, in 1949. Directionless and very young, the promise of a brilliant career as a concert pianist was moribund.
Without the direction the young prodigy needed, Ivey married in her early twenties. She met her husband, Eugene, who was a violinist and of Russian descent, in New York City, and the two were wed in Lynchburg. Of their relationship, Judith Connell in the magazine Lynchburg wrote, “Her former husband, a character right out of Gaslight, tried desperately to convince her—luckily, in vain—that she had no talent and would never amount to anything. On the one hand he would avidly encourage her to practice, on the other he would threaten to break her fingers if she did.”[7] It was for Ivey a frightful situation, as Eugene, a manic-depressive, would turn nasty at the flip of a dime and become nastier, when drinking, and threaten his wife with, and sometimes administer, physical harm. Ivey would often wait till he was asleep before attempting herself to steal a few hours of sleep.
It was only after six years of marriage that Ivey related to her father the nature of her relationship. Mait arranged for his daughter to leave Eugene. He and his wife waited till Eugene was away—while he was practicing for some concert—and they snuck her away at night. Mait then contacted a lawyer, arranged for her divorce, and bid Julia to take back the name Ivey, which she eagerly did. Mait paid for the legal fees and for her removal, as Julia was at the time just getting by financially.
As a diversion from music and a faltering marriage, Ivey developed a deep and lasting interest in cooking, perhaps because cooking had much in common with musical performance. She began to collect and study cookbooks—she studied cooking with a passion that rivaled her interest in music and her incredible collection would swell to well over 1,000 books—and Ivey would over time become a gourmet cook and share and exchange recipes with friends and her students of the piano.[8] In spite of her love of cooking, she liked to frequent restaurants—in Lynchburg, Appleby’s and a Polynesian restaurant that no longer exists.[9]
Ivey’s education was lifelong. While living in Philadelphia after her divorce, she matriculated at Temple University where she earned a bachelor of science in education. In the 1970s, Ivey earned a living by teaching piano in both Philadelphia and New York, where she commuted once per week.[10] On her day in New York, she studied for one expensive hour under the child-prodigy Sascha Gorodnitzky (1904–1986), a Kiev-born child musician whose parents founded the Julliard School of Music in New York. Gorodnitzky was dubbed a perfectionist and stern teacher, yet so perfectly did he transfer his genius to students that pupils from the year 1977 to the year 1979—and Ivey was likely one of them—won 40 world-class competitions.[11]
Ivey rebounded from her many setbacks and flourished in the early 1970s. In 1973, she toured me the venues of the Eastern United States and for the only time Europe. When she performed, she ensorcelled her audiences, yet she never got wrapped up in her budding global celebrity. Her music she considered as a gift to her audiences. “Music is such a lovely way to give people something beautiful—it answers people’s needs and tells them that you honestly care and would like to see the world better.” Music, performed cleanly and honestly, she firmly believed, had some capacity to heal human wounds.[12]
Ivey answered not to her critics, but to her talent, which was immense. “To be a good artist you are second—you have a debt to your talent, to your teachers and to your public.”[13] Nonetheless, critics raved about Ivey’s performances, which often featured the composers Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and Prokofieff.
Always focused, Ivey preferred to arrive at a venue some 15 minutes prior to performance, and she confessed never to have been nervous—never to have butterflies. That she believed would have conduced to a disastrous performance.[14]
Though answering to an inner critic, musical critics raved about her performances.
After a performance in Philadelphia, Daniel Webster of Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: “Many of the most demanding technical feats she carried off with ease. Attention to the architecture of the music was in agreeable evidence.” James Felton of Philadelphia Evening Bulletin stated: “Miss Ivey’s runs in the high register were glittering and fluid; showed a pliant right hand that is capable of sensitive details. There was poignancy in the slow movement where a sense of clinging is desirable, care for the intertwining melodies, quietly poetic in a fine way.”[15]
Ivey also toured Europe in 1973: e.g., Istanbul, Brussels, Zurich, London, and Hamburg.
Karl Grebe of Die Welt said of one of Ivey’s performances in Hamburg: “Played the sonata ‘Les Adieux’ with sensitivity, virtuosity, understanding, and appropriate soulfulness. Prokofieff’s ‘7th Sonata,’ a tremendous performance surpassing the finest to be heard at most piano recitals. One does not often hear piano playing which identifies itself so closely with the music and with the instrument. Audience stood in awe and respect before an achievement which cannot be exceeded, possibly never equaled.”[16]
The Swiss newspaper Neue Zuricher Zeitung mentioned Ivey’s “highly brilliant technique and remarkable, often irresistible musical temperament. There was perfect creative interpretation. One felt literally transported forward by a truly dynamic exhilaration. Creative adaptation and spiritual penetration.”[17]
After a performance in Brussels, Jef Vermeren stated: “Order, balance, style, great distinction, warmth, delicacy—everything was in it. Astonishing vigor showed an admirable control of spontaneity and brilliance. She possesses a soul with qualities which enable her to reach the probing nostalgia of Chopin through a most expressive touch. Julia Winston Ivey has a flexible technique, her work is deep and interpretive, her playing has nuance and, at the same time, strength. All this expresses a great musical intelligence.”[18]
So exquisite were her performances in Europe that she received several offers throughout her tour to remain there.[19] She would never return to Europe to dazzle audiences with his masterful playing, as she could not secure the funding required for a lengthy second tour, and it was in Europe that she needed to be to make her name. She had always wanted, said close friend Harriet Edmunds,[20] to be among the best pianists of her time—an equal of the best male pianists—but her gender was no asset. In an effort to actualize that goal, her programs are lengthy and intense, and she practices on pianos designed for men—with one-ounce weights attached to each key of her pianos in order to keep her fingers and hands strong. Moreover, she kept a rigorous schedule: up at 5 a.m. and to bed by midnight.[21]
It is difficult to assess precisely the largeness of her talent, given the many setbacks she had to overcome in her musical career—e.g., the deaths of Samaroff and Kindler, seven years of a forgettable marriage, being female, and lack of sponsorship. As a strong person, her gender, she would never admit, was an obstacle. The last especially, lack of money, kept Ivey from competing with the world’s best pianists. Nonetheless, when one examines the most celebrated and talented musicians of Lynchburg, it is not unreasonable to assert that Ivey was the greatest musical talent to whom Lynchburg has ever given birth.
“An evening of fun ‘on the town’”
Teaching Piano and Sharing Life’s Simple Experiences
Ivey’s talent was singular, but it was never fully actualized. Childless after a failed marriage, an only child, without the money needed for touring the proper venues, and in effect homeless due to the intensity, constant demands, and mercurialness of preparation for musical performances, she longed for some sense of personal-life stability. She found some sense of stability through teaching music, which she came to prefer to performing it professionally. By teaching music, she could remain closer to her proud parents. She would teach at the Shipley School and the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, PA, and offered private lessons throughout most of the rest of her life.
As a tutor, Ivey did more than teach piano. She exposed her large number of students to the vibrant world of musical composition and musical expression. Teaching music was for her a shared experience—she combined learning with joie de vivre—and so students became lifelong friends with whom she shared coffee, food, conversation, and other intimate experiences.
Says former pupil Sioux Xenakis of her time with Ivey:
I began taking piano lessons from Julia when I was in fifth grade and finished when I graduated high school. Julia would come to our house on Saturdays from about 8 a.m. until noon. I have four sisters and we all took lessons. She always made the lessons fun. I still sometimes sit down at my piano 40-plus years later, and attempt a Sonatina or try out one of the songs from my Scott Joplin book. There was always coffee on. We always celebrated her birthday, July 1, with a homemade cake. She was a great teacher, always smiling.[22]
Another former student, Laurie De Linde, iterates the sentiment that playing the piano was both educative and fun:
I was a student of Julia’s for years. The piano teacher I had before Julia made me dread lessons, but Julia did not. I remember her wanting to make music fun and understandable. I remember her giving me a book of opera synopses—I still have it—and also always giving a piece I wanted to play. She never yelled or scolded. My family and I stayed in touch with her for years. I went to college in Philadelphia where she lived, and she invited me to dinner. It was nice. After she moved to Virginia she joined us in Pennsylvania once for Thanksgiving. My sisters, who also took lessons with Julia, and I visited her last year [2019] in Lynchburg. Although unable to speak then, she still had her same smile and we all enjoyed the time together.[23]
On March 13, 2021, I had the opportunity to chat with former pupil Karen Grigsby, who spoke eloquently of Ivey. Ivey, said Grigsby, was a very tall women—perhaps about 5’9” or 5’10”—and had a vibrant smile, creamy complexion, and very long, auburn hair that was customarily draped around the top of her head, but when let down, extended nearly to her waist.
Grigsby continued: “I graduated from high school at the same time that I stopped taking lessons. She said then, ‘You can call me Julia now.’”
“We always stayed in some sort of contact. Over the years, she and I exchanged Christmas cards and birthday cards,” said Grigsby, who was merely too young to ask just those sorts of questions that told her about the soul of Ivey. “I know little about her marriage—how she met her husband and how old they were when they married. Julia was a private person who did not talk much about her life or her achievements, and I was too young, or knew too little, to ask her the questions that would have solicited interesting answers.”
Grigsby noted that Ivey always glistened, even in her later years. “Even when her hair turned white, she was still lovely. She just sparkled. And she was always so nice to me, to my sisters, and to our mother.”
In her will of October 23, 2006—the terms of the will had subsequently been altered—Ivey bequeathed the sum of 250 dollars to be distributed to “each of my following named piano students,” and 33 were listed. She wished a sum sufficient for each “to have an evening of fun ‘on the town’ in memory of piano lessons with me.” Grigsby, Xenakis, and De Linde were among the recipients.
“She was very, very smart”
The Reclusive Final Years
Ivey returned to Lynchburg—a city she repeatedly said she detested—to assist her mother, when her father became debilitated, prior to his death in 1982. When Mait died, she talked constantly about returning to Philadelphia, but she did not. She remained instead with her aging mother, who increasingly needed her daughter’s assistance. When her mother, Julia, passed in 1990, Ivey had been in residence in Hill City for some 10 years. At 62 years of age, the thought of removal from the “execrable” City of Hills and beginning anew her life in her beloved Philadelphia was just too agonizing. She, thus, merely remained in Lynchburg.
Ivey’s dislike of Lynchburg has been confirmed by reports from neighbors, who came to know her in the final two decades of her life. Ivey has been described as opinionated and firm in those opinions, confrontational, and especially, reclusive.
Ivey came to prefer animals to people. She always had a cat around her home over the years, as she was a decided animal-lover, who did much in life, and in death, to support animal-related charities. She was fond of feeding the stray cats, squirrels, and even interloping deer. She especially loved cats, and would buy large amount of feline food to feed the stray cats that would come to her home to be fed. In her 2006 will, Ivey bequeathed that the revenue from her real and personal estate be distributed among 45 institutions for the care of animals across the country. For instance, profits from the clothes for sale at Moyanne’s Estates and Consignments off Twelfth Street in Downtown Lynchburg are going to the Lynchburg Humane Society.
The virtuoso liked to live pharaonically by collecting things of value. That is something that she learned from her mother, who used to take her to auctions—to Trevillian’s on Commerce Street especially—and taught her how to evaluate collectibles. Over time, Ivey acquired a fine and impressive collection of art-works (e.g., paintings, figurines, statuary, and even artistic clothing), elegant pieces of silver, exquisite glassware, and even some gewgaws to suit her fancy. She also left behind an incredible amount of music on her large collection of records. Ivey’s enormous cosmopolitan collection of cookbooks shows her to have been a gourmand of taste eclectic. Ever conscious of fashion, she also acquired an incredible compilation—the pieces number well over 1,000!—of blouses, furs, jackets, and coats.
Neighbors have stated that Ivey, late in life, was a solitudinarian. She had very few friends in Lynchburg, because she wanted very few friends. She always kept at arm’s length others. Lynchburg offered nothing like the venues of entertainment and education that Philadelphia and New York City offered and to which she had become accustomed. Lynchburgers were not cosmopolitan, spirituel, and cultured.
Ivey did, for several years, have one close female friend—a nearby neighbor named Harriet Edmunds, who worked for many years at Bowen’s Jewelry. Edmunds and Ivey became close friends, as Julia would frequently come into the store and purchase some of the finest pieces of jewelry that the store offered, though she disliked diamonds.
Edmunds spoke fondly about Ivey’s large intelligence and character. “It was rare that she could not converse on any subject of substance that would come up. She was very, very smart—perhaps the smartest person I’ve known.”[24] Ivey was also of singular character. “She was really unique, and sort of fun to be around, even if you were put off by her. So smart, talented, and—and different—different from everyone else. She was eccentric—that’s the word that best describes her.” Edmunds related that Ivey never honored in her later life any request to play the piano in front of others. Perhaps Ivey was aware of declination of her talent and did not wish to play at a level less than a virtuoso. She was a performing artist, not a player, and a performing artist was to be evaluated by a body of work over a lifetime, not by a piece played in front of friends and neighbors.
Yet their friendship was tested, when Harriet enjoined Ivey, in reply to the latter’s constant grousing about the banes of Hill City, to remove to Philadelphia. Ivey pledged that she would never again speak to Harriet. The promise would be broken, but the friendship waned as Ivey aged. “Julia was getting too dependent on me and my husband increasingly needed my attention.” The aging Ivey would sometimes stay with Edmunds and her husband for a few days, but she was always so demanding and often so disagreeable that she would soon no longer be a welcomed guest at the Edmunds’ residence. Moreover, Edmunds noticed that Ivey was slipping mentally and contacted Ivey’s lawyer about her debilitation so that she could receive the help that she needed. When Ivey learned of that communication, she was irked.
Edmunds saw little of Ivey till the latter’s passing. Edmunds thought that spending time with Ivey in the latter’s rapidly declining days would do no good to either of them.[25]
Ivey at some point put up a tall fence around her large yard. The fence became a large topic of conversation among neighbors, especially since the chain-link fencing was put in place upside down—viz., with the sharp metal ends at the top, not the bottom. Was it for her safety? Was she essaying to keep people off her property? Was she discouraging others from knowing what sort of “stuff” she had in her house?
Ivey learned to drive in Lynchburg and owned an old Chrysler. She was, says Edmunds, constantly getting into small accidents. At one point when her vision was impaired, she wrecked her Chrysler and was forced to purchase another vehicle, which she drove only as needed.[26]
Collecting at some point in Ivey’s return-to-Lynchburg years turned to hoarding. Inspection of her house after her death revealed a house chock full of boxed and bagged goods—mostly books and clothes. Her capacious attic was completely filled with cookbooks, clothes, and sundry other items. She too had an enormous storage bin filled with cookbooks and clothes. Most of the containers were of blouses. Many of the boxes of clothes were from QVC and were of blouses that were never worn. Such a box typically contained two sorts of blouses and there would be five to a box—three of one type and two of another, but all of different colors.
Why did Ivey become a hoarder?
The sixth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders describes hoarding as a mental disorder: Hoarding Disorder. Hoarders collect items because they are deemed valuable or useful, even if only deemed so at some future time. An item might be valued, for instance, because it elicits singular memories of an event or of a person. At some point in time, collecting becomes obsessive and impedes the physical health of the hoarder. Spaces, for illustration, can become so crowded that that it becomes impossible to access a refrigerator or a bathroom. The disorder is correlated with depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and dementia. It occurs most frequently in persons who had a trying or unhappy childhood and who live alone.
Preferring to be alone, Ivey found an escape from her loneliness by acquisitiveness. Ivey especially enjoyed shopping as much as possible through QVC. She would spend numerous thousands of dollars each year on cooking items, perfumes, cosmetics, and especially cookbooks and clothes. Her house was so chock full of purchased items in boxes, many of which were never opened, that she turned to storage in her large attic and in storage spaces. Even then, her house would twice be deemed “unlivable,” and twice she, removed for a while to a hotel, was forced to garbage hundreds of boxes of purchased belongings to free up space for living in order to remain in residence at her Parkland house.
Ivey developed an addiction to shopping through QVC—an ideal scenario for a solitudinarian—and she would urge neighbors to do the same. QVC’s trucks would often appear at her residence and drop off numerous boxes of purchased items. A representative would frequently call her to check on her wellbeing and then turn to new must-have items for her, and Ivey would buy according to recommendations. Being friendless, frequent conversations with a representative of QVC—it is likely that the same representative called on each occasion—would have been a much welcomed respite from the mustiness and tediousness of solitude.
Why was Ivey so reclusive in the final few decades of her life?
First, Ivey was used to loneliness. As she had no siblings and spent much of the time in her youth studying music, Ivey likely had a lonesome childhood, though there is no reason not to believe that she was not much loved by her parents. Moreover, Ivey had no children during her disastrous marriage, and she never remarried, so she had no close family other than her parents. With beauty, elegance of personality, enormous talent, and sufficient wealth—she was regarded by some as the wealthiest woman in Lynchburg in her final years and her wealth came from later-in-life inheritance from her mother’s side—she certainly must have turned the head of many of Lynchburg’s males. Furthermore, she had no siblings other than her older brother, who died just prior to his second birthday, and so she had no nieces and no nephews. Her closest relatives were cousins who lived in Pennsylvania and New York.
Second, being a handsome woman in her early 50s when she removed to Lynchburg in the late 1970s or very early 1980s, she was still a divorced woman and that would have limited the circle of female friends, most of whom at a similar age, or nearly so, would have had husbands. Moreover, being divorced would have been much more indecorous in Lynchburg than in Philadelphia or New York, for Lynchburg was and continues to be a small and conservative city. Thus, her situation and the nature of the city contributed to her solitude. Yet Edmunds noted that Ivey was of such a strong temperament—whether by nature or by life’s albatrosses—that cultural mores bothered her little.
Finally, Ivey’s demeanor—distingué, confident, and uncompromising—must have put off potential friends and male suitors. Persons of large talent and large accomplishment are often mentally inaccessible, and that was the case with Ivey. Yet Edmunds stated that Ivey never had any desire to marry again. Ivey did not even know why she married Eugene. “She might have been pressed into it by her parents. You know, he was musical; she was musical. But Julia was a loner—always a loner. And I don’t think that she ever had a desire to have children. They needed too much attention.” That could have been a reason for some of the tension between Ivey and her husband. Eugene did remarry and have children.
Yet through many of her final years in Lynchburg, Ivey did have one close male friend—a constant companion, Lawrence Haythe. Haythe, a black man, was a genial, quiet, gentle, and unassuming person—a postman by trade—who helped Ivey in every capacity. Haythe would assist Ivey in tasks such as carrying purchased items to her attic, helping her with gardening, cleaning, and of course being an ear to whatever she would have to say. Haythe was kind to Ivey, and he was paid sufficiently well to assist him in his retirement at his house at 1515 Monroe Street. Bequeathed 10,000 dollars after her passing, he unfortunately predeceased Ivey.
By the year 2015, Ivey suffered from a devastating fall, from which she convalesced at Westminster Canterbury off VES Road in Lynchburg, and when better, she had “sitters” (caregivers) to attend to her wellbeing at her house. She was soon diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, though the only visible symptom was difficulty with speaking. She thus spoke very little.
Like her parents, Ivey was a member of Rivermont Evangelical Presbyterian Church, though it is not known the extent to which she exercised her religiosity. Edmunds said that Ivey had had a “falling out” with a member of the church whom she had known since childhood and thereafter ceased to go to church. “Whenever it seemed as if she would become a member of a club, an organization, or something, she would always have a falling out. I wish that she would have had a hobby, other than attending auctions.”[27]
Ivey would remain at her residence on Parkland until she quietly passed away in September 2020. She is interred, next to her parents and infant brother, in Lynchburg’s Presbyterian Cemetery.
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[1] For more, see M. Andrew Holowchak, A “Biography” of Lynchburg, Virginia: City with a Soul (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2021), 619–21.
[2] “William Maitland Ivey Jr. (1923–1925),” Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.comk/memorial/199769914/williampmaitland-ivey, accessed 14 Mar. 2021.
[3] “Maitland Ivey,” The Spreading Chestnut: A Newspaper for the Men and Women of the Herald Division (Lynchburg: Mead Corporation, July, 1949), 8.
[4] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey: Lynchburg’s Renowned Concert Pianist,” Lynchburg: The Magazine of Central Virginia (Lynchburg: Progress Publishing Corp. Sept.–Oct. 1977), 20.
[5] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey,” 20.
[6] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey,” 20–21.
[7] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey,” 21.
[8] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey,” 21.
[9] M. Andrew Holowchak, Interview with Harriet Edmunds, 24 Mar. 2021.
[10] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey,” 21.
[11] “Sascha Gortodnmitzki, Pianist and Julliard Faculty Member,” The New York Times, Section D, 8 Apr. 1986, 30.
[12] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey,” 21.
[13] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey,” 21.
[14] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey,” 21.
[15] Pianist Julia Winston-Ivey,” Design Moon Studio, 3.
[16] Pianist Julia Winston-Ivey,” Design Moon Studio, 3.
[17] Pianist Julia Winston-Ivey,” Design Moon Studio, 3.
[18] Pianist Julia Winston-Ivey,” Design Moon Studio, 3.
[19] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey,” 21.
[20] M. Andrew Holowchak, Interview with Harriet Edmunds, 24 Mar. 2021.
[21] Judith D. Connell, “The Probing Musical Soul of Julia Winston-Ivey,” 22.
[22] “Julia Winston-Ivey,” Legacy.com, https://wee.legacy.com/obituaries/name/julia-iivey-obituary?pid=196835628, accessed 14 Mar. 2021.
[23] “Julia Winston-Ivey,” Legacy.com, https://wee.legacy.com/obituaries/name/julia-iivey-obituary?pid=196835628, accessed 14 Mar. 2021.
[24] M. Andrew Holowchak, Interview with Harriet Edmunds, 24 Mar. 2021.
[25] M. Andrew Holowchak, Interview with Harriet Edmunds, 24 Mar. 2021.
[26] M. Andrew Holowchak, Interview with Harriet Edmunds, 24 Mar. 2021.
[27] M. Andrew Holowchak, Interview with Harriet Edmunds, 24 Mar. 2021.
An honest story of Southern history, talent, charm and grace.
Well! Thank you. I dod not know of this young lady till now. Wish I could claim kinship to her. I do have family in the Blackwater region of Virginia, but,alas, they are on my mother’s side
Interesting. My late first wife grew up on Parkland Drive. Her parents owned their home there until they sold it around 2000 and moved into a retirement community before moving to Florida.
This woman, whom I have never met, is dear to me. I was part of the team that helped to distribute items of his possession through selling, after her death. I began to dig for information, once I learned a bit about her matchless talent. She was perhaps a musical genius, and thus somewhat off-puttish. Her comment–“To be a good artist you are second—you have a debt to your talent, to your teachers and to your public”–resonates with me. I try to put as much effort into crafting beautiful sentences as she did into crafting astonishing music.
“his” should be “her”