I remember reading Bill Hoffman’s fine column last year in The Syncopated Times describing his first visit to a West Coast Ragtime Festival (WCRF) and I was wishing I could someday attend. Therefore, when I learned that the Society’s Board was opting for a virtual festival this year, I was elated (one of the few, I am sure—since there is such a tradition of personal camaraderie at the 34 year-old event).
Until the weekend before Thanksgiving this year, I had been fond of referring to the faithful followers of ragtime as a community. However, after watching the entire virtual 2020 WCRF event, I realized there is a more appropriate term for our group…we are a family.
Last summer when the group’s Board decided to cancel their 2020 live festival scheduled for the weekend before Thanksgiving, they began almost immediately planning a virtual event. As such, to produce a three-day, eight concert program, they had to literally “invent” it from scratch. That intrepid group so ably led by Virginia Tichenor in conjunction with Andrew Greene and the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra did just that and even managed to maintain many of the traditions for which the Festival is known.
It will take so many superl
