![]() ![]() Prior to this double-LP, Blake had a successful career as a songwriter with hits such as Charleston Rag (1899), I’m Just Wild About Harry (1921), and Memories of You (1930). ![]() In 1969, Columbia Records released The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake. There are several important projects that contributed to the Ragtime revival of the 1970s, several of which will be outlined here. However, the most impactful Ragtime revival occurred in the 1970s, the events of this time truly securing the art form’s place in the United States culture. 1950 was also the year in which scholars Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis published their seminal history book entitled They All Played Ragtime. (I intend for this to be the topic of a future blog post.) There was a brief revival of Ragtime in the 1950s, but much of the music was highly commercialized and played on out-of-tune pianos to mimic old-time saloons. ![]() ![]() Its popularity was displaced by Jazz, though the nature of this transition is disputed (Schuller, Early Jazz, p. Ragtime is often considered the first popular music originating from the United States, reigning prominent from the 1890s until the mid-1910s. A delightful recital, all told.This blog post is part of my Ragtime Project, which encompasses an upcoming EP of Ragtime-inspired music, blog posts about the history of the music, and a forthcoming self-published collection of essay about what in this music and its history resonates with me as a performer and composer. Many of the other rags favor leisurely tempos, and Tony Caramia, who teaches at the Eastman School of Music, performs them with the proper gentle pace. The individual composers offer some unique touches, such as a jazzy virtuosity in Robert Frost's piece for the 1984 Olympics, or the dueling key signatures of Minnie-Rag by Sydney Hodgkinson. Most of the rest of the material here is really quite traditional. Some of these later-day ragsters add distinctly late-20th-century touches, including the playful dissonance of Bolcom, and especially, the Phillip Glass-style droning of the Minimalist Rag by Kevin Putz, which is barely recognizable as the same format that Joplin worked in. Joplin was fully aware of the theatrical possibilities of the format, and was not averse to adding a programmatic spin to some of his own pieces. Review: "These "new" rags are generally faithful to the spirit of the golden age of ragtime, as exemplified by Joplin. Various auditory repasts offer composers a choice of forms and influences from such divergent sources as jazz, non-Western music, romanticism, dodecaphony, minimalism, pop and rock, asceticism, cross-over, and spiritualism and all on the same menu! This variety serves both as a high-calorie, vibrant sign of our own creative times, and as a demanding burden placed upon American composers seeking, indeed groping for, their own unique voices: +Red or green peppers? Radish? How much onion? What kind of lettuce? How do I choose my OWN language that will allow me to speak what I need to say?' The works recorded on this disc present the distinct and often unusual offerings of a few leading, contemporary American +workers' in this sonic kitchen." The pianist for this disc, Tony Caramia, is associate professor of piano at the Eastman School of Music, where he is director of piano pedagogy studies and coordinator of the class piano program. The works represented in this Eastman American Music Series of new music recordings bear eloquent testimony to the effect this healthy and diverse musical diet has had on the work of American composers. In striking contrast to this earlier era, today's younger generation of composer benefits from exposure to what has been called a +veritable salad bowl of styles,' marked by an extremely wide range of character, aesthetics and musical cross-currents. Sydney Hodkinson, the producer for this series of Eastman recordings says: "From roughly the late 1930s through the early sixties, most serious American composers worked within one of two basic musical encampments, continuing and expanding upon traditions established by the 20th century giants Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Go Back > Something different for rag fans - new works in the classic traditions! While the music on this recording is not Scott Joplin, it most certainly does capture the flavor of old time rags. ![]()
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