The 27th annual West Coast Ragtime Festival was a ragtime piano lover's dream, with many of the top players in the world performing simultaneously in six different venues over three full days.
Surely one of the purest interpreters of Joplin rags alive today, Scott Kirby has become a favorite at many festivals each year, including the WCRF. His well-paced, thoughtful and evocative renditions stay true to the original score, then feature his own tasteful arrangements in the repeats, adding to the original music while still honoring Joplin's genius. Kirby's beautiful renditions seem to channel Joplin himself.
This wonderful performance of Scott Joplin & Scott Hayden's Sunflower Slow Drag from 1901 was recorded before an enthusiastic audience on Friday, November 22, 2013 during the West Coast Ragtime Festival at the Clarion Inn & Conference Center, Sacramento, CA.
To learn more about Scott Kirby, visit his website:
www.scottkirby.net
Sunflower Slow Drag is featured on The Complete Rags Of Scott Joplin Vol. 1, played by Scott Kirby, available through CD Baby:
www.cdbaby.com/...
A native of Ohio, Scott Kirby began his study of music at the age of six, and continued formal piano instruction for seventeen years. He worked under Robert Howat of Wittenberg University of Ohio, and Sylvia Zaremba at the Ohio State University. After obtaining an English degree from Ohio State University, Kirby moved to New Orleans and began his professional music career, as a street performer. In the following four years, he recorded the complete rags of Scott Joplin, and made his debut at all of the major ragtime festivals in the United States, as well as festivals in Belgium, France, Norway, New Zealand, and Hungary.
Kirby has served as Musical Director of the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, MO, and of the Rocky Mountain Ragtime and American Music Festival in Boulder, CO, as well as director of the San Juan Islands Ragtime Institute. His appearances include a segment on CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood in 1998, and at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. Kirby co-founded a record company (Viridiana Productions, L.L.C.), has made 25 recordings, and has composed over 150 original works for piano and other instruments. Admired by fellow pianists including George Winston, and hailed by Time Magazine as an "ace pianist," CBS News' Charles Osgood agreed that "...Critics call Scott Kirby one of the best interpreters of ragtime music on the scene today."
Kirby's artistic passion grew to include to visual art, and in 2005, while living in France, he completed 75 paintings and 28 piano compositions, including "The Prairie Devotionals," The paintings (belonging to a set entitled "Visions of the Great Plains") and the new musical works set the groundwork for his new multi-media project "Main Street Souvenirs." Kirby now lives in Sandpoint with his wife Marie-Dominique and two daughters Sara and Leah-Marie, and divides his time between composing, painting, performing and teaching.
Kirby has achieved a rarified status as a performer of ragtime and related American styles. Considered "Today's best player of Scott Joplin's music" (Trebor Tichenor, author of Rags and Ragtime), Kirby has appeared at every major ragtime festival in the U.S., plus events in Hungary, Norway, New Zealand, France, England and Belgium. His unique presentation highlights the worlds of Classic Ragtime, New Orleans Jazz, and Blues, then expands to include the marches of John Philip Sousa, the songs of Stephen Foster, Latin-American styles, Afro-Cuban rhythms, European Romanticism, Rock & Roll and Original works ranging from the syncopated to the impressionistic. Kirby's sense of Americana is enhanced by his historical commentary, and also by his art work, a series of watercolors entitled "Visions of the Great Plains," which he presents in either an accompanying exhibit or in a video presentation during the show.
Kirby also specializes in American and Pan-American musical traditions that span 150 years. From the inventive compositions of New Orleans genius Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Classic Ragtime, Cuban Danzas, Brazilian Tangos of Ernesto Nazareth and Creole styles from the Caribbean, to contemporary works by Kirby himself, the Pan-American umbrella is full of color and variety. Kirby weaves these styles together with historical and cultural background that shows the connections and cross-influences that have been occurring in the Western Hemisphere for hundreds of years, and have influenced not only American Popular Music, but also American Classical and Art Music composers.