Sedalia syncopated again this year as the 38th Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival attracted aficionados from near and far for four days of revelry in ragtime and related vintage music styles. Festivities opened Wednesday, May 29, and closed Saturday, June 1, having presented seven formal ticketed concerts, seven symposium sessions, a vintage fashion contest, a donors’ party, and uncounted hours of free performances at two listening venues about town. In addition, after hours festivities each evening at the State Fair Best Western featuring open piano and whatever other instruments fans might supply fostered unlimited sociability.
By my strictly unofficial count, 30 performers contributed to the melodic fantasia which musical guru Brian Holland organized into magic totality. Headliners included famed New Orleans pianist Tom McDermott; pianist and entertainer Jeff Barnhart, who also performed with his flutist wife Anne as Ivory and Gold; Brit Neville Dickie; boogie exponent Carl Sonny Leland; Frederick Hodges, virtuoso of all styles of music; violinist David Reffkin; and percussionist Danny Coots.
This year’s festival continued the somewhat stealthy retrenchment that had begun in 2017 with the elimination of the popular opening day informal gathering in the lounge at State Fair Community College. Of the former six free performance and dance venues about town, only two remained: the cap
