Ragtime Music
Ragtime Music
Poppabear
Swing Joined: 12/25/07
#1Ragtime Music
Posted: 12/25/07 at 3:08pm
Are there any other fans of ragtime out there? I am new to the message board world and would appreciate any help to find this music. I have been to Itunes and particularly like the Ragtime Allstars work - great introduction. Anyone know of any ragtime specific boards? Thanks.....
vmlinnie
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/19/06
#2re: Ragtime Music
Posted: 12/25/07 at 3:53pm
I presume we're talking the Ragtime genre, not just the Musical?
Love both, but don't know any boards!
The rain we knew is a thing of the past -
deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say
browsing on spire and bogland; but today
our sky-blue slates are steaming in the sun,
our yachts tinkling and dancing in the bay
like racehorses. We contemplate at last
shining windows, a future forbidden to no one.
Derek Mahon
"Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets."
Arthur Miller
deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say
browsing on spire and bogland; but today
our sky-blue slates are steaming in the sun,
our yachts tinkling and dancing in the bay
like racehorses. We contemplate at last
shining windows, a future forbidden to no one.
Derek Mahon
"Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets."
Arthur Miller
#2re: Ragtime Music
Posted: 12/25/07 at 8:15pm
When "The Sting" first was released in 1973, ragtime music had a resurgence. Several Scott Joplin tunes (arranged by Marvin Hamlisch who won an Oscar for his efforts) went up the Billboard charts.
As a ten year old kid, I actually got very into it. I played the piano back then, and suddenly I HAD to learn how to play ragtime. I started with "Solace" an easy but hauntingly beautiful Joplin tune. Then a few years later, my grandfather came to visit from New York. He had been a Nickelodeon piano player in his youth in New York City, playing for the silent films. He sat down and played Maple Leaf Rag for me, and I was mesmerized and profoundly impressed. I had such a connection to him at that very moment.
By the time I was 15 years old, I could play the hell out of that song myself! I don't play piano much anymore these days, but that's one tune that I can still sit down and bang out with gusto.
My mother, early in her acting career, was the ingenue for a few seasons at a well-known melodrama theatre in Cripple Creek, Colorado. The piano player there was Max Morath (father of Kathy Morath, for some of you who may have worked with or seen her on Broadway). Max was a GENIUS at playing ragtime piano, and released several albums of ragtime music. Mom naturally collected them all, and we used to play them a lot when I was growing up.
So I have a special connection to the music, and to the people who played it.
You can imagine when I was sitting in the audience the first time I saw the musical "Ragtime," it hit me in my very core. It truly is "music of the soul" for me.
"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
#3re: Ragtime Music
Posted: 12/26/07 at 10:57ambest12bars - I remember the ragtime revival following The Sting. The soundtrack to The Sting was played often in my house and my mother started playing Joplin's rags on the family piano. My favorite has always been the Pineapple Rag.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
Jon
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/20/04
#4re: Ragtime Music
Posted: 12/26/07 at 12:02pmIf your computer has a decent MIDI player, there are several sites where you can download MIDI files of rags by Joplin and others. These are all public domain.
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