David Reffkin is the director of The American Ragtime Ensemble, founded in 1973, and he is a leading authority on ragtime orchestration and performance. He is the producer and host of The Ragtime Machine, a radio program on KUSF (90.3 FM and at kusf.org) in San Francisco, on the air every week since 1981. Many of his interviews and reviews appear in The Mississippi Rag, for which he is a contributing editor, and he won the readers’ poll for Best Ragtime Journalist. As a professional violinist, David appears as a soloist and with large and small groups, performing many styles of music. David also works as a conductor, arranger and musical contractor, and he is the curator of exhibitions for San Francisco Opera. Acknowledged for his work on musical publications, he wrote the Foreword for a recent discography of cakewalk, ragtime and novelty recordings. David was one of the musicians who helped create the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in 1974, and for 10 years he organized and directed the All-Star Orchestra there. He received the Festival’s Scott Joplin Award in 2006.
David Reffkin is the director of The American Ragtime Ensemble, founded in 1973, and he is a leading authority on ragtime orchestration and performance. He is the producer and host of The Ragtime Machine, a radio program on KUSF (90.3 FM and at kusf.org) in San Francisco, on the air every week since 1981. Many of his interviews and reviews appear in The Mississippi Rag, for which he is a contributing editor, and he won the readers’ poll for Best Ragtime Journalist. As a professional violinist, David appears as a soloist and with large and small groups, performing many styles of music. David also works as a conductor, arranger and musical contractor, and he is the curator of exhibitions for San Francisco Opera. Acknowledged for his work on musical publications, he wrote the Foreword for a recent discography of cakewalk, ragtime and novelty recordings. David was one of the musicians who helped create the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in 1974, and for 10 years he organized and directed the All-Star Orchestra there. He received the Festival’s Scott Joplin Award in 2006.