Scott Kirby Piano: Gladiolus Rag by Scott Joplin - 2013 West Coast Ragtime Festival
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- 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's Gladiolus Rag from 1907 was recorded before an enthusiastic audience on Sunday, November 24, 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
Gladiolus Rag is featured on The Complete Rags Of Scott Joplin Vol. 2, 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.
Just right . The Gladiolus is for me at least, the definitive Joplin Rag, and one of the hardest to play really well. Like the equally demanding Fig Leaf Rag, it won't tolerate inaccuracy.
Maple Leaf Rag is for sure more demanding, but this tune is so hauntingly beautiful, for me, it's his best work.
@@thescifimodelguy I have to disagree with that this rag is definitely more demanding than the maple leaf rag
@@thescifimodelguy The magnetic rag is equally haunting, though I must admit that I am addicted to this one.
Beautiful! Perfect! I haven't heard this played as well since the when Joshua Rifkin recorded these 30+ years ago!
Great. I think it's sweetest of all Joplin's rags, especially the third movement with five flats. So hauntingly beautiful the way you performed it.
Absolutely yes and Scott Kirby is one of the best performers of the Joplin Rags.
@@fp7149 Absolutely. I love the way he plays.
Beautiful rendition. Played with such grace and style. Loved the tempo. I'd hazard a guess that Joplin would have enjoyed your performance
Beautiful rendition, very rich third section thank you
This is my favorite Joplin rag, and your performance is lovely. Thank you!
One of my all time greats
I wish I could buy Your Scott Joplin pieces on iTunes
I think you can -- or, at least, you could once upon a time. I'm on my Android phone at the moment so I'm not tied in to iTunes (no Apple hardware), but I'm pretty sure I bought a Joplin collection by Scott Kirby there.
Wow! A performance that truly does justice to Joplin's genius!
MARVELLOUS !
So very glad you've shared this with the wider world, somewhat of a solace for having been unable to hear you in person this year. I will always treasure the liner notes you have, in verbal interpretation of what Joplin is expressing in this piece. Please assure us that that CD is still available! -- certainly a very favorite of ours.
The emotional and spiritual depth of this composition, and indeed its interpretation, defies description beyond the language of music. We are indeed grateful!
+David H Finke So well put, Mr. Finke!
David H Finke I feel the same way.. and then I think of Magnetic Rag and I feel the same way.. then I think of Solace..
David H Finke Very well said and quite fitting!
Very like
ELEGANT!
Bravo
Beautifully done!
Up there with Rifkin , outstanding
Beautiful ❤
Beautiful rendition. I love this piece.
This guys awesome.
Well done!
Scott is brilliant.
i like it, go a little slower though
Its a mystery to me why many pianists feel a need to "cowboy" this beautiful piece. Even the more upbeat Maple Leaf Rag benefits from a slower tempo than what we are accustomed to hear it played.
They are all complex works, and it is pointless to play them faster than what the audience can mentally (and emotionally) cope with.
+russell brown Scott Kirby's tempo is perfect here. Any slower and it drags. LIFE is the main theme of every Joplin rag, so must always be a certain liveliness about the playing. The spirit of the march is inherent in most rags.
+russell brown Agreed
+russel brown It's not a mystery. Rags are intended to be played at 100-120bpm. Most performances you hear are surprisingly at the proper tempo, and you've twisted the notion that slow means "dont play at 140+bpm" to meaning to play it at a crawl. What's a mystery is why so many people get so confused on the proper tempo for rags when it's explicitly documented.
Going slower would be a disservice to the composer, the genre and the music itself. This is indicated as a slow march, which is ~100bpm and is eight notes in the left hand. Going a slower in this performance would ruin it.
I found it played in double speed more enjoyable and fun.
Shuo Xu I would guess most music is more fun at double the speed. Chopin's Funeral March for example must be an absolute riot.
The problem with that is- you lose all the subtle beauty and nuance in the harmony and rhythm.
Tin Pan Alley and some of the simpler rags are better suited for speed racing - theres not as much going on as in the classic rags with all the beautiful, dense counterpoint and harmony.
Ragtime should never be played fast, at least not Scott Joplin's compositions. Per Scott Joplin instructions
Scott Joplin himself would say otherwise
This is not Gladiolus Rag at this tempo. This is a funeral march.
It shouldn't be as fast as maple leaf rag, this is the perfect tempo
Joplin wrote "Slow March Tempo" on the score. Here, in this rendition, we are around 130 bpm. The same tempo as most modern EDM and Dance music. Hardly a funeral march.
@@michaelchimenti4989 You're counting eighth notes as quarter notes. This is actually about 70 bpm.
love ragtime music awesome job , i subbed you