Editing McCoy Tyner (section)

== Philadelphia Upbringing ==

Alfred McCoy Tyner was born on December 11, 1938, in Philadelphia, growing up in a household where music was valued and encouraged. His mother, a beautician, arranged for piano lessons when McCoy was thirteen, sensing musical ability that deserved cultivation. He studied at the Granoff School of Music and West Philadelphia Music School, developing technique while absorbing the jazz that surrounded him in Philadelphia's African American neighborhoods.<ref name="rashid">{{cite book |last=Rashid |first=Steve |title=McCoy Tyner: Style and Syntax |year=2015 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |location=Urbana}}</ref>

Philadelphia's jazz scene in the 1950s provided extraordinary opportunities for young musicians to learn from established professionals. Tyner encountered John Coltrane during this period, when both were developing the styles that would transform jazz. The younger Tyner absorbed Coltrane's harmonic explorations while developing his own distinctive approach to the piano. Their musical relationship, which would culminate in the Coltrane Quartet, began in Philadelphia's clubs and jam sessions where the city's musicians gathered to play and learn.<ref name="porter"/>

Tyner's early influences included Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, whose approaches to jazz piano he studied and absorbed while developing his own voice. His Philadelphia contemporaries, including bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Albert Heath, provided the musical community within which his style matured. By his late teens, Tyner had developed the foundation of his mature approach—the powerful left-hand voicings, the percussive attack, the modal thinking that would distinguish his playing.<ref name="rashid"/>