response 194 of 256:

Jun 4 14:41 UTC 2001

As of yesterday, my "parlor ragtime recital" auction item was
"going once" for a bid of $30.  If you want the recital and
are willing to pay more than that, you should make a bid on
it soon.  See item 51 in the Auction conference
<item:auction,51> .

Tomorrow I leave for the biggest and best ragtime festival
of them all, the annual Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia,
Missouri.  Headliners include many of the big names in
ragtime, including Bob Darch, Sue Keller, Mimi Blais, Scott
Kirby, Morton Larsen, David Thomas Roberts, Jan Douglas,
Bob Ault, Reginald Robinson, Tony Caramia, John Arpin,
Trebor and Virginia Tichenor, the Bo Grumpus group, the
Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra, Terry Parish, and many others.
The festival takes over the town's historic district and
fairgrounds for five days of wonderful music.  What a
blast!

response 196 of 256:

Jun 13 19:13 UTC 2001

It's "stride", not "slide".  "Stride ragtime" is a playing style
that originated in New York around the mid-1910's.  Two of its
foremost practioners were Luckey Roberts and James P. Johnson.
I'll quote from Jasen & Tichenor, _Rags and Ragtime_ (Dover,
1978):

        The word Stride means the syncopation alternating
        between the right and left hands and the counter
        melodies created by a moving bass line.  This was
        putting a new twist on the regular way to play
        ragtime -- alternating the syncopation between
        both hands made it twice as difficult to perform,
        thereby enabling the performers to win contests.
        It not only sounded harder to do, it was in fact
        harder to do.

On another topic:  I just got back from Sedalia.  Great
festival!  I'll post a report in a day or two.

response 198 of 256:

Jun 14 14:07 UTC 2001

ROTFL.  What an image.

response 200 of 256:

Jun 17 18:24 UTC 2001

Eh?

response 202 of 256:

Jun 17 19:19 UTC 2001

The 2001 Scott Joplin Festival took place from Wednesday, June
6 to Sunday, June 10, in Sedalia, MO.  I was there.  Of the
four Scott Joplin Festivals I've attended, I think this one was
the most fun for me and the most rewarding musically.  Too much
going on to attempt to report on everything -- multiple free
outdoor venues, plus formal reserved-seat concerts, plus open
piano at after hours.  So I'll just mention some highlights:

The "Women in Ragtime" concert.  It wasn't officially part of
the festival but shared many of the same performers.  All
women.  My friend Nan Bostick from California co-emceed, along
with Mimi Blais of Montreal, who organized it.  Highlight for
me was Nan's and Nora Hulce's rendition, on two pianos, of
Grace Bolen's exquisite 1901 rag "The Smokey Topaz" (composed
when she was 16!).  It's a fact that many of the ragtime
composers during the ragtime era (1897-1917, roughly) were
indeed women, so there's lots of material to be mined for
concerts like this.

(During the intermission, I spotted Marty Eggers, bass player
with the Bo Grumpus trio.  He was there selling copies of the
excellent "Tichenor Family Album" CD.  As husband of Virginia
Tichenor and son-in-law of Trebor Tichenor, he's 1/3 of that
group as well.  We chatted about various things, including
krj.)

Private lesson with Tony Caramia, piano professor at the
Eastman School of Music and frequent headliner at ragtime
festivals.  I played a few things for him that I've been
working on lately and got a lot of useful feedback.

Caramia also gave a "master class" featuring some half dozen
players ranging in age from 12 to 19.  After hearing folks play
like college freshman Neil Blaze, high schoolers Marit Johnson
and Elise Crane, and twelve-year-old Emily Sprague, I'm
optimistic for the future of ragtime.  It's in good hands.

There were over thirty contracted performers at the festival,
most of whom I heard play at least once.  Plus a number of
other folks, like me, who weren't on the official program but
who played at various events.  Heard a ton of great music, most
of which I won't talk about in the interest of keeping this
short.  But I'll say that the concert to honor David Thomas
Roberts -- one of the finest contemporary composers and
performers of ragtime -- was wonderful.  I was impressed enough
by Brian Keenan's playing of folk ragtime to purchase his new
"Traditions" CD.  Bo Grumpus was in fine form at the various
venues where they played.  My favorite ragtime ensemble, the
Ophelia Ragtime Orchestra from Scandanavia, was at the festival
as part of its bi-annual U.S. tour, playing music for dancing
in the "tea tent" as well as a terrific set at after-hours in
the wee hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning.  Their singer
really rocks.  Actually, they all do.

Several opportunities to perform this year.  I was asked to
play at the informal opening and closing concerts of the
festival, and I also did a twenty-minute set at the Stark
Pavilion.  Plus an impromptu session in the headquarters hotel
lobby with guitarist Craig Ventresco & percussionist Pete
Devine (2/3 of the Bo Grumpus group), and banjo player Bob Ault
(1/3 of the Etcetera String Band).  We jammed for about an hour
and attracted a fair-sized audience, with Devine using a pair
of drumsticks on the table, chairs, drinking glasses, and other
surfaces in lieu of his usual equipment.  And one evening when
most people were at a concert that I'd decided not to attend, I
ran into pianist Terry Parish from Indianapolis in the hotel
ballroom and we did some duo-piano stuff.

Fun festival.  This year, I took my digital camera along and
will be posting some photos on the web.

response 204 of 256:

Jun 23 04:06 UTC 2001

I've not found a way to rewind, but I like what I've heard of "The Alabama
Slide."  I look forward to listening the other one.

response 206 of 256:

Jun 24 19:06 UTC 2001

I like the last picture.  :)

Thumbnails would be a nice touch.  I'd offer code, but I can't get to
my own home page just now.  (The file server is up, but it's not yet
serving files.)  I *think* it would be something like:

        <A HREF="http://jremmers.org/Sedalia2001/john_remmers.jpg">
        John Remmers
        </A IMG SRC="http://jremmers.org/Sedalia2001/john_remmers.jpg">

There are some size markers in there, too.  Look at the source of

        http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gelinas/House.html

for an example of how I did it.

OK, the server is letting me look at my files now, if only slowly.  Here
is one of the the pictures:

 <A HREF="House-3dDraft/102Burton-FrontView.JPG">
 <IMG SRC="House-3dDraft/102Burton-FrontView.JPG" border=0 height=72 width=96>
 </A>

I included text by using a table, and putting the text on one row with
the pictures on the next row.  It *should* be possible to put the text
before or after the IMG tag.

{Yes, I could re-write this response to eliminate the evidence of my
thinking,  but I'll leave it. ;)

response 208 of 256:

Jun 24 19:20 UTC 2001

Joe's #206 slipped in.  Yes, I thought of doing thumbnails but
was feeling lazy.  I'll add them at some point.

response 210 of 256:

Jun 25 10:09 UTC 2001

Well, yeah, the techie discussion might be better elsewhere,
but on the other hand, it's nice to know that people are 
actually reading this item.  Sometimes I feel like I'm talking
to myself here.  :)   (And yes, I was planning to do the
thumbnails as smaller images, to save bandwidth.)

response 212 of 256:

Jun 26 01:45 UTC 2001

I've really enjoyed your MIDI files, John. I usually play them in WinAMP, and
the three of them now are usually in random play while I work. It's just like
having a professional pianist at the next desk! I'm very impressed that these
are first takes. I know there is software available (I have it around here
somewhere) that will let you play with the voices in the MIDI file --- change
the piano voice to banjo, for example. I'm dying to see how "Pearls of the
Harem" would sound. :)

response 214 of 256:

Jun 26 21:04 UTC 2001

(typos, sorry.  Here's the cleaned up response...)

Thanks, Mickey.

For a change, I've recorded something that probably everyone
reading this item has heard -- Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer",
published in 1902.  The piece didn't enjoy large sales at the
time but became a hit 70 years later when it figured prominently
in the soundtrack of the movie "The Sting".

It's been speculated that Joplin originally wrote the tune for
a mandolin or banjo ensemble (such groups were common at the
time) and only later arranged and published it as a piano solo.
There's no proof of this, but the general style of the piece and
the fact that it is dedicated to "James Brown's Mandolin Club"
lend credence to the theory.

See http://jremmers.org/midi/entrtanr.mid for my performance.

response 216 of 256:

Jun 28 16:07 UTC 2001

Thanks for the pointer, Anna.  Of those three, I attended only
the Kickoff Concert, so this will give me a chance to fill in
some blanks.

In past years, the Kickoff Concert has featured the music of
various composers from the ragtime era such as Scott Joplin.
This year's kickoff was a significant departure from tradition,
devoted exclusively to the works of David Thomas Roberts,
perhaps the finest contemporary composer of ragtime music and a
major influence on other contemporary composers and performers
of ragtime.  I recommend this concert highly, especially if
you're acquainted only with the ragtime of the past -- as emcee
Scott Kirby pointed out, it will likely change your view of
what ragtime music is about.

response 218 of 256:

Jun 28 21:16 UTC 2001

A technical point:  The software I'm using appears to lose
pedaling information when it converts from Disklavier to MIDI
format.  I don't know if that's the fault of the software or
a limitation of the MIDI format.  At any rate, the result is
that some passages come out sounding staccatto and disconnected
that were not played that way.  On much ragtime that's not
too noticeable, but it is on "Texas Fox Trot", where I use
the sustaining pedal extensively.