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31st annual West Coast Ragtime Festival will be held November 17-19,
2017 at the Sacramento Marriott Rancho Cordova, Rancho Cordova, California. Below is the
list of performers scheduled to appear as of 9/22/2017. You can expect this list to grow considerably throughout the year.
Click on a performer's name to expand/contract the full bio (where there's a + mark) or open a full bio page. |
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| Solo Performers |
Elliott Adams
has been playing ragtime since age 10 and is now known internationally as a ragtime player, collector, historian, writer, and composer.
His extensive collection of ragtime, blues, and early jazz sheet music is available to researchers, musicians, and publishers. He has several notable solo recordings on the Stomp Off and PianoMania labels.
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Paolo Alderighi
was born on November 5, 1980, in Milan, Italy. He earned a degree in Piano Performance from the G. Verdi Conservatory of Milan in 2000, and a degree in Economics for Arts, Culture and Media from Bocconi University in 2005.
Since 1996 he has performed all over Europe, the United States, and Japan.
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Nick Arteaga
was born and raised in Orangevale, a suburb of Sacramento. Since 2012, he has been a regular performer at the Sacramento Ragtime Society meetings and the Ragtime Corners of the Sacramento Music Festival. Nick's interest in ragtime began in his teens and was originally just a diversion from his formal classical studies. In his late 20s, Nick began composing piano rags and has since branched out to composing works in many other styles.
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Cleve Baker,
as a youngster after the War, was turned on to the Traditional Jazz of Lu Watters that he heard on the radio, including live ragtime played by Wally Rose, long before ragtime was revived by The Sting.
He was "hooked" by the history of the music, its composers and how it has played a role in the social history of the United States.
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Tom Barnebey
has been in trad jazz since the 1960s, when he began playing banjo and piano in pizza parlors around the Los Angeles area, and cornet with the then newly formed Jelly Roll Jazz Band. After moving to Sonoma County, he led the well regarded Jazz Salvation Company for 20 years.
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Jeff Barnhart
is an internationally renowned pianist, vocalist, arranger, bandleader, recording artist, ASCAP composer, educator and entertainer. Jeff began his professional career at age 14 playing and entertaining four nights a week in a restaurant in his home state of Connecticut. Here he began to learn the classic swing, jazz and ragtime repertoire of the early 20th century. Due to his versatility, vast repertoire and vibrant energy, Jeff is in increasing demand as a participant in international jazz events as either a soloist or as pianist in All-Star Jazz ensembles.
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Nathan Bello started piano lessons at the age of six and began piano studies initially with his father. While growing up he became fascinated with player pianos at the piano store where his father worked. Nathan initially learned harmony and music from his father and grandfather, who also composed music. Serious study of ragtime began at the age of eight, when Nathan would sight-read the Joplin rags on a daily basis. By age 10 he could play a music roll then play the music by hand, imitating artists like James P. Johnson, J. Lawrence Cook, Eubie Blake and Fats Waller.
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Jack & Chris Bradshaw, classically trained ragtime
piano duo artists from Gilroy, California, righteously proclaim that, with 88 keys and 20 fingers at their disposal, they have the most piano keys held down at any one
time — many of them right! Not going for speed, their quest is for clarity and classic ragtime charm as their fingers dance off the keyboard to
Jack's four-hand arrangements of popular rags, cakewalks, marches and novelty numbers. Jack also performs solos to round out their programs.
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Danny Coots
in 1964 was just six years of age when he began playing drums in upstate New York. Since then, he has studied with Nick
Baffaro, Rich Holly, Alan Koffman and Jim Petercsak in percussion. Danny attended The Crane School of Music and St. Lawrence University. He eventually served as adjunct faculty at St. Lawrence University, Clarkson University and Potsdam State University from the 1970s into the 1990s.
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Kylan deGhetaldi
hails from Santa Cruz, California, and started playing piano and violin at a young age. While studying classical and jazz he was soon inevitably drawn towards ragtime.
Kylan's YouTube Channel (youtube.com/foundring) was one of the first to feature amateur interpretations of stride pianists like Fats Waller and Art Tatum. A decade and millions of views later, Kylan has been fortunate enough to perform and collaborate with some of finest musicians in the world, most notably his introduction to the thriving ragtime community.
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Jared DiBartolomeo
is an engineering graduate of University of California at Irvine.
A lifelong enthusiast of ragtime and vintage piano music, Jared was first exposed to ragtime at the age of two when his father played the Maple Leaf Rag on the home piano. The syncopated rhythms left an impression on Jared, and at age eight he started taking formal piano lessons. After receiving a folio of Scott Joplin’s rags and some recordings, Jared dived deeper into ragtime enthusiasm.
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Richard Dowling, hailed by The New York Times as "an
especially impressive fine pianist,
appears regularly across America in solo recitals, at
classical chamber music festivals, ragtime & jazz music festivals, and as guest soloist in concerto engagements with
symphony orchestras. Career highlights include performances in New York at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, The Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, The Metropolitan Club, and the 92nd Street Y. Mr. Dowling has presented solo recitals in the Far East, South America, Australia, Africa, and Europe. He has been a regular featured artist at the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Missouri, the West Coast Ragtime Festival in California, and the Juneau Jazz & Classics Festival in Alaska among others.
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Robyn & Steve Drivon became part of the West Coast ragtime movement in 2003 when Robyn began performing on tuba with the Porcupine Ragtime Ensemble. Soon after, Steve joined in playing trombone, and their new love for ragtime was born. Soon, Steve started showing up with his drums, which fostered the Sullivans & Drivons quartet. Since 2007, Robyn and
Steve have been enjoying working with Chris and Jack Bradshaw as the Ragnolia Ragtette.
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Marty Eggers
is described by Terry
Waldo as having "an encyclopedic knowledge of
the ragtime and early jazz repertoire". He has played with numerous Bay Area jazz and ragtime groups, including
the Yerba Buena Stompers, John Gill's San Francisco Jazz Band and the Black
Diamond Jazz Band. In addition to solo piano, Marty appeared at the
festival for years as bassist with the Bo Grumpus Trio.
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Andrew Greene
is the founder and director of the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra, and is the leading young authority on orchestral ragtime and silent film accompaniment. Mr. Greene founded the Peacherine Orchestra while a freshman at the University of Maryland, hoping to draw attention to this neglected but historically important music.
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Dale Hadley
is a seasoned ragtime composer who has recently put his composing skills on hold to concentrate on performing. A native of Florida, Dale began his musical journey with piano lessons at age five. At 19 he gained experience playing in pizza parlors and Wild West theme park shows. Dale's love of classical ragtime began with an Air Force tour of duty overseas. During an Armed Forces Radio broadcast, he heard a haunting piano solo later discovered to be Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin.
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Rosemary Hallum
is a pianist, performer, writer and teacher specializing in ragtime and novelty, built upon a classical background. She earned a B.A. in English, M.A. in education, and Ph.D. in music & movement education, plus postdoctoral studies in the U.S. and Europe.
Dr. Hallum has played in music festivals in Europe (Portugal, Italy, Hungary, England) and the U.S. (West Coast Ragtime Festival, Ragtime Corners of the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee), and performed in master classes of Paul Badura-Skoda, Boris Berman, Tony Caramia and others.
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Frederick Hodges
is hailed by the press as one of the best pianists in the world, and has established a reputation specializing in late romantic music as well as Broadway and Hollywood musicals of the first half of the 20th century by America’s best composers, such as George Gershwin and Cole Porter. He maintains a busy concert schedule of stage, television, radio, and film appearances around the globe.
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Brian Holland is an internationally renown pianist, composer, recording artist, and entertainer who has enjoyed a music career spanning more than 35 years. After spending his formative years playing in pizza parlors and clubs throughout Indiana, Brian's career flourished when he discovered the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest. In 1999, he won his third title and was retired as "undefeated." He has since returned three times to serve on the
judges panel.
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Vincent Johnson's multifaceted approach to
ragtime and syncopated piano music is both forward thinking
and historically minded. As a pianist, he is dedicated to the
oft-forgotten novelty piano style and peppers his performances
with renditions of rarely heard compositions. As a
transcriber, he is as likely to be transcribing a syncopated
song arrangement from a Duo-Art piano roll as he is to be
transcribing the latest composition of a fellow Southern California ragtimer.
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Max Keenlyside
is not only a pianist but also a composer, music engraver, and piano technician. From the age of 10, he has written and performed music in ragtime, stride, and classical styles, gaining a reputation as a top young artist in his field. In 2009, Max represented Prince Edward Island in the National Artist’s Program held in the conjunction with the Canada Games. A favorite at jazz and ragtime events around the world, he has headlined several times at the Scott Joplin, West Coast Ragtime, and Blind Boone festivals.
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Carl Sonny Leyland
was born & raised on the South Coast of England, growing up close to the city of Southampton.
As a child he was drawn to the American music which he heard on LP records his father would play. It was here that he developed an appreciation for Dixieland jazz, the rock & roll of the 1950s & the country music of Jimmie Rodgers & Hank
Williams.
At age 15 Leyland discovered boogie woogie when he heard a school friend working through a written arrangement of a tune called JD's Boogie Woogie (Marvin Wright). Captivated by the sound of the repeating 8 to the bar left hand pattern, Leyland was inspired to go to the piano & begin on a path that would become his life's purpose.
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Frank LiVolsi is a pianist and composer from Rhode Island who specializes in ragtime and early jazz. Beginning his musical education at the Knapp School of Music under the instruction of Mrs. Julia Tombello, Frank received classical training and only discovered a passionate interest in ragtime during his early teen years.
Frank's first performance outside New England was in 2011, when he performed at the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia,
Missouri.
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Carl Lunsford's career began in 1954 when he joined The Red Onion Jazz Band in New York City and sat in with the Turk Murphy Jazz Band, which sparked his love for West Coast Traditional Jazz. He played with the Red Onion on and off until 1959. During that period he also played with Skip Parson's River Boat Jazz Band and played in the pit band in The Boyfriend. In the summer of 1959 he joined Ed and Jean Kittrell's Chicago Stompers and toured Europe.
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Jonathan Meredith
has been playing finger-style ragtime guitar for about 40 years. He plays both nylon and steel string guitars for both classical rags and parlor rags as well as ragtime arrangements of original, popular, jazz, novelty tunes from the 30's and 40's. He plays in and around the foothill area of Nevada City and Grass Valley. In the mid 1980's he produced a series called "Ragtime" in Nevada City featuring piano, guitar, dancing, slideshows, history, cakewalks and ensemble groups.
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Larisa Migachyov
was born in Russia and began her classical piano training at the
age
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Ezequiel Pallejá,
from Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a ragtime and early jazz performer since half a century ago,
participating in many Argentinian bands, like Tiempos Viejos Jazz Band, Roseland
Jazz Band, Guardia Vieja Jazz Band, Antigua Jazz Band, Eureka Jazz Band, Porteña
Jazz Band and at present the Fenix Jazz Band, attending long-time shows in Argentina
and participating in international festivals in New Orleans and Connecticut in the USA.
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Will Perkins
is a native of Riverbank, California, who has been performing at ragtime/jazz festivals since the age of 14. His love for the traditional American piano styles of Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, and Dick Wellstood have led him to opportunities to perform at music festivals around the United States and beyond. Will has been a featured performer at the Bohem Ragtime and Early Jazz Festival in Kecskemet, Hungary, and at the Buenos Aires Ragtime Festival in Argentina. He has also been a featured performer at the West Coast Ragtime Festival, the International Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival and many other festivals around the United States.
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John Reed-Torres
(b. 1991), a South-Central Los Angeles native, recalls hearing ragtime for the first time as a child when he heard an ice cream truck creeping along to the strains of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer".
Right then and there the ragtime bug bit him and sparked his love for a wide range of antiquity.
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David Thomas Roberts
began composing, painting and writing at age eight. His first serious compositions reflect the influence of such composers as Chopin, Satie, Joplin and Ives. He has composed 140 solo piano works, including the major suites Map Dreams and New Orleans Streets, as well as chamber pieces, art songs, choral and electronic works. He recorded five LPs (1978-1985), and has appeared on 20
CDs, many devoted to his own compositions.
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Jack Rummel
has pursued the piano as an amateur most of his life. A composer and reviewer, he has hosted the weekly ragtime radio program KGNU's Ragtime America since 1980. He is also founder and co-producer of the annual Rocky Mountain Ragtime Festival. He practiced dentistry in Boulder,
Colorado, for over 30 years,
retiring in 2002. He is a tireless promoter of ragtime music and its performers.
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Christoph Schmetterer
started taking cello lessons at the age of eight. Not until he was nineteen did he start composing and playing the piano, which has become his preferred instrument.
His first works were rags, and ragtime remains in the center of his almost 200 compositions. Apart from that, he composes dances, marches and sacred music. He writes not only for piano, but also for orchestra, band and choir.
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Sean Sharp
is back for his eighth West Coast Ragtime Festival. This year (2017) he will present From Broadway to Bombay: Around the World with Illustrated Songs an illustrated-songs program of tunes written about various locales, with Frederick Hodges at the piano. Sean has performed with illustrated songs for over 17 years and has given shows at previous West Coast Ragtime Festivals, the Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival, the Shasta Silent Film Festival, and at the Corte Madera Centennial's Ragtime Night festivities in 2016.
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Martin Spitznagel
has been hailed as a remarkable, astonishing, and "face-melting"
musical talent. His flying fingers and sparkling repertoire have left audiences across
the country enthralled with America's first popular music, Ragtime.
Whether performing the masterworks of Scott Joplin or the score to Star Wars, Martin is
truly at home on the piano bench.
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Squeek Steele,
was born and raised in eastern Kentucky, and began playing the piano by ear at the age of 3. Other than piano recitals, her first real public playing came at age 12 when she played gospel songs for an old-time revival. Squeek holds a Guinness World Record (1990 book,
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Adam Swanson
is one of the world's foremost performers of ragtime and early American popular music, including ragtime, early jazz, the Great American Songbook, and more. He holds a bachelor's in classical piano and a master's in musicology from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Although he is only 25 years old, Adam has been a featured performer and lecturer at ragtime and jazz festivals across the United States, and he is the only four-time winner of the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest.
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Virginia Tichenor
has been consumed by ragtime her entire life, as the daughter of Trebor Tichenor, the noted ragtime scholar, pianist, collector and founder of the St. Louis Ragtimers. She studied music at the St. Louis Community Association for the Arts and took advanced training from concert pianist, John Phillips. Always at the crossroads of the ragtime revival, her parental home houses the world's largest library of ragtime sheet music and piano rolls. Virginia grew up with legends like Eubie Blake, Max Morath and Butch Thompson chatting in her own living room.
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Stephanie Trick is, in the words of the great Dick Hyman, "one of the nicest gifts to arrive on the jazz piano scene in recent times, and we couldn't be more delighted to welcome her.&qout; Louis Mazetier, a respected interpreter of Harlem stride piano, writes in the Bulletin of the Hot Club of France that she has "won the esteem of specialists in the genre with wonderful interpretations of stride classics."
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Richard Zimmerman
is a ragtime performer, historian, author and producer who has single-handedly been greatly responsible for the recent worldwide revival of ragtime.
He recorded The Complete Works of Scott Joplin and The Collector's History of Ragtime. Both are considered to be milestones in the annals of ragtime recording.
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| Youth Performers |
Ramona Sidney Baker
is 16 years old and has been playing ragtime for four years under Virginia Tichenor, but she has been interested in ragtime for many more years than that. She credits her father, noted jazz musician Clint Baker, as the one who first interested her in this addictive music. It started with a few records from the 1900s that had ragtime dance music on them, which Ramona recalls hearing when she was three to four years old.
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Diego Bustamante
is an 18-year-old from Paradise, California, who became interested in ragtime when, as a kid, he heard The Entertainer by Scott Joplin. The ragtime world discovered him at the West Coast Youth Ragtime Competition six years ago. Since then he has appeared at the Sutter Creek, Oakhurst, and West Coast festivals, the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo, plus several youth concerts.
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Michael Chisholm
is from Houston, Texas, and has grown up in a musically appreciative family. His first music training was in middle school, where he learned to play the xylophone and marimba. Eventually, he graduated to piano. Michael's first exposure to ragtime was watching JoAnn Castle play on a rerun of the Lawrence Welk Show. From that moment, he knew ragtime was his style of music.
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Alethea Sung-Miller
is 17 years old and resides in Sacramento, California where she is home schooled. Allie loves writing music as well as performing. Though she began in classical music, her good friend Diego Bustamante introduced her to ragtime when she was 11, and she immediately fell in love with it. She also harbors a growing fondness for jazz and has attended and played at the Sacramento Trad Jazz Society meetings.
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Oliver Moore,
16 years old, has been playing piano since the age
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Ryan Wishner, after hearing his mom play “The Entertainer” one night at the age of 10, took interest in the piano and was immediately drawn to ragtime. That interest has expanded to include just about any popular music from the early 1800s through the 1930s. Ryan’s biggest goal in performances is historical accuracy, and he often bases his playing style on old recordings and piano rolls.
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| Groups |
Buffalo Crossing is a string band firmly rooted in the old-time music tradition, with a vast repertoire to suit any audience and any occasion. From traditional fiddle tunes to modern classics in an old-time style, from country rags to swing, Buffalo Crossing will show you a good time.
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Ivory&Gold®
has been praised by The L.A. Jazz Scene as a musical duo that can "draw out the beauty in the rich melodies and play the music
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The Pacific Coast Ragtime Orchestra
is a group of 10 musicians dedicated to playing and
preserving turn-of-the-century ragtime music. The Ragtimers, organized in 1980 by music teachers from Pacifica and Half Moon Bay, coastal towns south of San Francisco play dance and casual music written between 1885 and 1920.
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Raspberry Jam Band has become part of the music scene in the Sacramento, Sierra Foothills and Bay Area. They have participated in the Ragtime Corner of the Sacramento Music Festival (formerly known as the Jazz Jubilee), the West Coast Ragtime Festival, the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society, Music for Humanity, Music on the
Divide...read more.
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| Seminar
Presenters
See the Seminars Page for details about each seminar. Click on the presenter's name for expanded biographical information. |
Max Morath
Topic: Goodbye Ragtime, Hello Jazz Max Morath occupies a unique space as a spokesman for American music and popular culture. He played a key role in the revival of ragtime in the 1970s with his Off-Broadway show Turn of the Century (1969). Other productions followed until he retired from performing in 2007, having logged over 5000 engagements in the USA and Canada. He remains active today as a writer and consultant.
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Andrew Greene
Topic: Orchestrations of Scott Joplin's Music Andrew Greene is the founder and director of the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra, and is the leading young authority on orchestral ragtime and silent film accompaniment. Mr. Greene founded the Peacherine Orchestra while a freshman at the University of Maryland, hoping to draw attention to this neglected but historically important music.
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Ed Berlin
Topic: Scott Joplin's Personality — Characteristics and Contradictions In 1981, Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute for Jazz Studies (Rutgers University) wrote that Ed Berlin’s book Ragtime: A Musical and Social History “sets new standards for ragtime scholarship.” In following years, Ed continued path-breaking scholarship with his books Reflections and Research on Ragtime, which won an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award in 1988, and King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era, now in its second edition. In reviewing this new edition, David Reffkin wrote: “The most reliable biography of Scott Joplin has been expanded and updated! ... Ed’s craft of biographical writing makes it a worthy reading experience.”
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Frederick Hodges
Topic: Fred Astaire in Ragtime Hailed by the press as one of the best pianists in the world, Frederick has established a reputation specializing in late romantic music as well as Broadway and Hollywood musicals of the first half of the 20th century by America’s best composers, such as George Gershwin and Cole Porter. He maintains a busy concert schedule of stage, television, radio, and film appearances around the globe.
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Ryan Wishner
Topic: The “When” and “Where” of Ragtime’s Beginnings After hearing his mom play “The Entertainer” one night at the age of 10, Ryan took interest in the piano and was immediately drawn to ragtime. That interest has expanded to include just about any popular music from the early 1800s through the 1930s. Ryan’s biggest goal in performances is historical accuracy, and he often bases his playing style on old recordings and piano rolls.
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Richard Zimmerman
Topic: Ragtime Revivals — The First 75 Years Richard Zimmerman is a ragtime performer, historian, author and producer who has single-handedly been greatly responsible for the recent worldwide revival of ragtime. He recorded The Complete Works of Scott Joplin and The Collector's History of Ragtime. Both are considered to be milestones in the annals of ragtime recording.
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| Dance Instructors - Check back for dance instruction schedule. |
Bruce Mitchell
returns to the West Coast Ragtime Festival. His career began in the 1950s and spans all types of dance, with an emphasis on vintage and folk dancing.
Bruce is director of the Camtia Dance Ensemble, specializing in German dance, which has danced all over the Western United States, for nearly half a century.
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Richard Duree
was new to Sacramento in 1960 when he worked for the Department of Justice. A colleague invited him to go to a dance concert on a Sunday afternoon at the Memorial Auditorium. They were late, and the first thing he saw when they entered was a performance of the Ukrainian Hopak. It took his breath away because he knew that these were not professional dancers and that he could do that, too! Richard became hooked.
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Stan Isaacs
is a vintage dance and folk dance leader and teacher in the San Francisco Bay area. Stan began teaching folk dance around 1958 while attending Antioch College in Ohio. In the mid-1980s, he discovered Vintage Dancing when he sponsored a workshop with Richard Powers at his folk dance group.
Stan arrived in the Bay Area in 1964, and soon began teaching at the UC Berkeley folk dance club, but he also danced in San Francisco, Menlo Park, and Stanford. During this period he taught workshops as the opportunity arose, and taught at Kolo Festivals, which were memorable occasions in San Francisco.
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| Piano Accompanists |
 Stanley Stern has been playing music for the dance instruction at the Sacramento Ragtime Festival for the past ten years. He often plays with a piano partner but for the 2015 Ragtime Show he will be playing with Mario Ojeda. Mario is a senior music student of violin at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. Mario's master violin teacher is Paul Severtson, the concert Master of the SLO Symphony Orchestra. He recommended Mario to Stanley for
performances...read
more. |
 Mario
Ojeda, born in Chula Vista, California started playing the violin at 12 years of age. He learned much of the classical symphonic pieces quickly and soon was asked to join several noted performing groups in this area. These include Opera San Luis Obispo, Symphony of the Vines, SLO Symphony Orchestra, Santa Maria Philharmonic, Cuesta Master Chorale. His teacher, Paul Severtson introduced him to Stanley Stern, who introduced him to Ragtime
music...more. |
| Special Presentation |
| Sean Sharp (vocals) and Frederick Hodges (piano) present From Broadway to Bombay: Around the World with Illustrated Songs, taking you around the fantastic, wondrous world of illustrated songs, all from the ragtime era and all bound to leave you gasping and hollering for more. Illustrated songs — the first "music videos" — were first shown in vaudeville and nickelodeon theatres (1894-1914) and were beautifully hand-colored, live-model photographs that depicted the story of each song's lyrics. Sean and Frederick will guide you through the intricacies of each song, asking you to join in for each song's final chorus! Come voyage through the melodies and images of the past, as Sean and Frederick serenade you with "There’s a ship in the Bay that will carry me away…." Introduction by Max Morath. |
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| Back to Top |
Elliott is an intrepid golfer and a practicing dermatologist.
Since 2011, he has been working on a four-hands piano project dedicated to classic jazz, swing, and ragtime with his wife, Stephanie Trick. They have recorded five albums together, including "Two for One," "Sentimental Journey," and "Double Trio Always."
To date Nick has written close to 200 compositions including many piano rags, Latin American compositions and teaching pieces for piano students.
Cleve did his first paying gig at the Red Garter during his senior year at Stanford Medical School. He has enjoyed playing with a Dixieland band in the North Bay, the Dixon Phirehouse Philharmonics Band, for over 30 years. He's also played with small jazz bands in the Sacramento area and on cruise ships.
Music composer, performer and reviewer Jack Rummel recently summed up the reason for Jeff's popularity, averring, "When it comes to talent, speed, versatility, creativity, mastery of multiple genres and just plain entertaining zaniness, Jeff Barnhart stands alone."
Nathan rebuilt his own player piano by the time he was 12. Gradually he transcribed many of the great piano roll artists' performances into sheet music format.
Besides performing at West Coast, this lively pair gets around and has appeared at the Sutter Creek, Scott Joplin, Blind Boone, Shaniko, Santa Cruz, and the Fresno Flats Ragtime Festivals, and at Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo. The rollicking road to ragtime thus far has taken them to eleven states, Canada, and even to Zürich, Switzerland for a youth ragtime competition and to play a few tunes. They also play in the Ragnolia Ragtette with the Drivons and as the Piano & Pipes Ragtime Trio with theater organist, William Coale.
He continued traveling and performing with David Amram, Ray Shiner, Daniel Pinkham, Herb Ellis, Will Alger, Jack Mayhue, Speigle Wilcox, Mimi Hines, Phil Ford, Bob Darch, Pearl Kaufman and Arthur Duncan.
Kylan is also a member of the viral jazz group Postmodern Jukebox with whom he's performed in over 50 cities around the world. In addition to working as a church organist, a professional word-games player, and raising his 4-year-old daughter, Kylan is the founder of the 
Over the next several years, under the mentorship of ragtime greats Marty Eggers and Virginia Tichenor, he expanded his repertoire to include the works of other ragtime composers, as well as novelty piano and stride piano. In recent years, he has focused on the more sophisticated novelty genres of the 1920s, from the early works of such composers as Roy Bargy and Zez Confrey, to the later impressionistic and introspective styles of Lee Sims and Bix Beiderbecke.
The National Federation of Music Clubs honored him with a special award recognizing his outstanding performances of American music. Works of Chopin, Debussy, Gershwin, Gottschalk, Ravel, ragtime, and early jazz figure prominently in his repertoire.
The Drivons have become known to many ragtime fans and musicians as familiar and welcomed performers in a number of festivals and concerts from Switzerland to California.
He has also appeared with the Tichenor Family Trio (Trebor Tichenor, Virginia Tichenor, and Marty).
He is the curator of the Arthur C. Ziegler, E.J. McBride, Katherine Lingham, Louis H. Burns, and Palm Leaf Ragtime Orchestra collections, along with his own personal collection of orchestrated ragtime, silent movie music, theater and dance selections, piano solos, and records. The collection totals over 10,000 selections from 1862 to 1950, with an emphasis on the music of 1880 to 1929.
Returning to Florida in the 1970s, he found the nation in a ragtime frenzy and began learning as many Scott Joplin pieces as he could lay his hands on. Dale began composing in 1984 and put together a folio that includes My Hero, later included on Sue Keller's CD Ragtime Reflections.
She belongs to several professional organizations (ASCAP, AFM, AFT, MTAC) and has teaching experience ranging from university through preschool. She has presented over 100 local, state and national teacher workshops, and is listed in several reference volumes including Who's Who and the Dictionary of International Biography. Students in her private piano studio in Alameda range in age from 8 to 80, and all do improvisation and creative work.
Additionally, he is a much sought-after silent-film accompanist for both live performances and DVD. He performs regularly at the Hollywood Heritage Museum, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in California, the Cinecon Film Festival in Hollywood, The TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, and at silent film festivals around the country. He also performs at music festivals around the country, such as the Sacramento Music Festival, the West Coast Ragtime Festival, and the Sedalia Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival. His website is 
Brian has played with some of the hottest jazz bands in the U.S. — Titan Hot Seven, Wally's Warehouse Waifs, the Holland Rhythm Company, and others — and has traveled all over the world performing his creative styles of jazz, ragtime, stride, boogie, and blues. Most recently Brian and Danny Coots have formed a musical partnership, and together they are quickly building a reputation as the fun and musical duo, Holland & Coots.
As a composer, Johnson combines the format and parlance of historical rags and
piano novelties with his own humor and sensibilities to create a personal,
unique style. His 
Max is especially lauded for his dazzling stride and traditional jazz chops. These demanding, two-handed and rich piano styles were crafted by the likes of “Jelly Roll” Morton, Fats Waller, and James P. Johnson. Max plays them all with a stylistic flair and an ear for detail.
Within three months he would be performing in public & shortly after would become a member of a respected local group "The Bob Pearce Blues Band."
Since then Frank has appeared at the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, California; the Blind Boone Ragtime and Early Jazz Festival in Columbia, Missouri; as well as venues in Wisconsin, Colorado, and Massachusetts. Frank is a recent graduate of the University of Rhode Island, having earned his master's degree in mechanical engineering and applied mechanics.
Carl returned to the United States and joined Turk Murphy in the fall of 1959. In the fall of 1962 he became lead banjo for The Red Garter and Your Father's Moustache in Boston, Philadelphia and New York.
Jonathan also produced a series of California and Klondike Gold Rush productions which were performed locally and at the Huntington Library in Pasadena. Vocal and instrumental arrangements of Fats Waller's tunes will also be heard. Jonathan also plays gypsy jazz, country swing and old-timey music in a band with his wife, Margo, called "The Buffalo Crossing".
Larisa has composed more than 22 rags, mostly in a very traditional style, and mostly named after various types of food. Since that first performance at the 2006 Scott Joplin Festival, she has performed at many other ragtime festivals, and in fact, helped start a new festival in San Antonio. She has released two CDs, A Heap of Rags in 2007, and Oh, That Ragtime Chick! in 2009. The latter CD features 13 of her own compositions.
He has composed more than 15 rags within the last 20 years. As a piano soloist, he has participated in the San Antonio Ragtime Festival (2010 and 2011) and the West Coast Ragtime Festival since 2012. He was a judge at the San Antonio young ragtime performers contests (2011 and 2013), and brought piano ragtime recitals to Houston (2011, 2013), San Antonio (2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013) and Lima, Perú (2013).
After a two-year hiatus as a religious missionary in the country of Uruguay, he has happily returned to music performing at numerous venues across the country.
Primarily self taught, John worked up performances of Scott Joplin rags and classical pieces. In 2009, John began studies at Pasadena City College and the Neighborhood Music School in Boyle Heights, where he was finally, after many years of perseverance, able to begin formal piano lessons through the generosity of scholarship donors. He has since performed at various venues in and around the city of Los Angeles, the states of California and Missouri, and even internationally in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
DTR has been heard on ABC's "Good Morning America," National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and across Canada on CBC Radio. His eclectic suite New Orleans Streets (1981-1985) was hailed by historian Al Rose in I Remember Jazz as "the single most important contribution to the culture of New Orleans in the past fifty years."
His recording for Stomp Off and his recent CD releases of Brun's Boys and Lone Jack: The Ragtime of Today has also put him in the forefront of ragtime composers now living. He has three published folios of original compositions.
He plays the organ at mass every Sunday in the small village of Wildungsmauer near Vienna. He is director of the wind band in the town of Bruck an der Leitha, where he also plays trombone.
He has performed with The Great Nickelodeon Show at the Turner Classic Movies Festival in Hollywood, the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy, the Telluride Film Festival, the Niles Essanay Film Museum and San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, among other venues. He is an original member of San Francisco’s 42nd St. Moon Productions and has appeared in over 20 of that company’s productions.
He found success early, winning a Yamaha Disklavier at the age of 14 in Calliope Media's nationwide Crazy for Ragtime competition. His entry, chosen from the hundreds of submissions by a panel of judges that included world-renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, coincided with the centennial of the birth of ragtime music in 1897.
She has performed internationally (Singapore, Hong Kong, Berlin, Germany) as well as in the U.S. (New York, Wyoming, Virginia, Connecticut).
He made his New York debut in Carnegie Hall at the age of 19, where he performed with Michael Feinstein. Adam has performed at the Cinecon Classic Film Festival in Hollywood and the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage in Washington, D.C., as well as in Hungary and Switzerland. He has worked with such musicians as Toronto's John Arpin, former rock star Ian Whitcomb, and legendary 1950s recording artist Johnny Maddox, who is one of Adam's greatest influences.
Her father was advisor-confidant for most of the ragtime community, so Virginia often heard new rags when they were forming in the minds of their composers. The topic of her college research project? The ragtime revival, of course! In 1998, Virginia released her first solo recording, a CD entitled Virginia's Favorites. It includes four two-piano duets with her father, Trebor.
A classically trained pianist, Stephanie was drawn to the piano at the age of five. In high school, she developed a keen interest in classic jazz. Graduating from college with a Bachelor of Arts in Music, she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society at the University of Chicago.
As a producer he originated theatrical presentation of ragtime with his "Where It Was!" concert series in Los Angeles which featured ragtime stars of the present and the past — including the then-forgotten Eubie Blake. He has since produced and directed many ragtime concerts.
Ramona tries her hardest to dig through the oldest examples of recorded ragtime on cylinders and early disc records, looking for the long-forgotten pianists behind all of the great singers of the period. She will be performing some of the rarest pieces at the festival. Besides West Coast, Ramona has performed at the Sutter Creek, Santa Cruz, and Scott Joplin Ragtime Festivals.
As also a classical performer, Diego made his second appearance with the Paradise Symphony performing a movement of a Mozart concerto in spring of 2016.
Since then, he has composed over 50 rags and has started collecting the original prints of ragtime sheet music. Besides piano, Michael likes to rag out on the flute, piccolo, and clarinet.
Allie also manages her own youth music group, The Sacramento Syncopators, with members from Sacramento, the Bay Area, and Chico, as well as performers from as far away as Florida. You can find out more about the group on their website: 
Oliver is from Chico, Calif., and maintains a busy schedule playing gigs, accompanying various productions, singers, and instrumentalists, and playing the upright bass and piano in various orchestras throughout the north state.
Ryan enjoys working on “mechanical music” machines such as phonographs and player pianos. He is currently studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Riverside.
The Porcupine Ragtime Ensemble
Sullivans
and Drivons
A graduate of Colorado College (B.A. English 1948), he alternated employment in radio and television with seasonal jobs as pianist and musical director for melodrama and stock companies in Colorado and Arizona, leading to a growing fascination with ragtime and American popular music. Graduate studies at the Stanford-NBC Radio & Television Institute sharpened his media skills, and in the early 1960s, for Public Television, he wrote and performed two nationally-distributed series — The Ragtime Era and Turn of the Century — half-hour shows which explored American popular culture through our music and theatre.
In addition to his books, Ed, who holds a Ph.D. from City University of New York, has written innumerable articles on a wide range of musical subjects and lectures at events in the U.S., Canada, and in Europe.
He is director of the annual Stockton Folk Dance Camp, and is President Elect of the National Folk Organization.
He'd been active in martial arts for many years and was very interested in human movement. That and the music made him an instant convert. He joined the Dionysian Dancers and performed with them for a couple of years, then joined Bruce Mitchell's Camtia Folk Ensemble and danced with them for several years. He also studied with Wee Steuber, who still is one of the best teachers he ever worked with, because she instilled in him a sense of value in folk dance.
In 1971, there was an opportunity to work in Israel, where he spent the next three years programming computers during the day, and teaching folk dances in the kibbutz at night. Israeli dancing was already well established, but the people were always eager to learn new dances, and to improve their styling. Stan recalls that there was a lot of enthusiasm, even under difficult circumstances.