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Billy Georgette’s final concert was on the 14th floor of the Montreal General Hospital in mid-January.

He played a few songs on an old, badly-out-of-tune piano and by the end of the little gig, doctors and nurses came out of their offices to give him a warm round of applause. Four days later, he was dead.

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The veteran Montreal jazz musician learned he had lung cancer in December and it spread throughout his body. He died on Jan. 21 at the age of 85.

“He played the piano four days before he died,” his sister, Susan Georgette, said in a phone interview. “There was a piano on the 14th floor and I had an orderly help me. We put him in the wheelchair and we wheeled him down (from the 15th floor where his bed was). And the doctors told me, ‘It hasn’t been tuned in 100 years.’ The night before I went, because I can play piano, and I played some chords and it was terribly untuned.

“We brought Billy down there and, my God. He first played one of his own compositions, a classical piece, and then he played They Say It’s Wonderful, and then he played a bebop tune. You would not believe how it sounded. It was not out of tune.