The 15th annual Central Pennsylvania Ragtime and American Music Festival this year continued a change begun last year. This festival is held in mid- to
My bassist-tubist friend Brian Nalepka put me wise to the quintet Miss Maybell and the Jazz Age Artistes and suggested they’d be a good fit
For the eleventh year in a row, I traveled to Davenport, Iowa for the Bix Beiderbecke Jazz Festival. This makes about 15 Bixes that I
First, a correction. In my January, 2024 report of the West Coast Ragtime Festival I attributed “Belle Adair,” played there by Richard Dowling, to him.
The 50th Old Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival took place on Memorial Day weekend at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. Ole Miss has
I was finally able to catch my favorite Chicago band, the Cellar Boys, at one of their regular habitats on Tuesday, May 21. I was
The annual Charles H.Templeton, Sr., Ragtime and Jazz Festival at Mississippi State University in Starkville has, for the past ten years, begun with the Gatsby
I spent the week of April 22-28 in New York volunteering at the New York Hot Jazz Camp at the Greenwich House Music School, which
Prior to the Templeton Ragtime Festival in late February, I spent a few days in New Orleans. As my regular readers know, when I travel
On a rainy Friday, December 1, I made my second trip to the Big Apple in just under two months. My main purpose was to
On October 4, I made one of my periodic jaunts to New York to indulge my passion for traditional jazz. Before Covid I used to
For the third year in a row (not counting the Covid interruption), I attended the West Coast Ragtime Festival on the weekend before Thanksgiving. If
The 34th Arizona Classic Jazz Festival, held as usual at the Crowne Plaza Golf Resort in downtown Chandler on November 2-5, was blessed with beautiful
Since its beginning in 2009, the Central Pennsylvania Ragtime and American Music Festival has grown in stature, if not in size. Originally held in early
I encountered reedwoman Natalie Scharf after she joined the front line of the Chicago Cellar Boys. If you’re not aware of this band (and you
In my report of the 2022 Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival In Davenport, Iowa, I opined that it was one of the best edition I’ve
I normally don’t report on one-off concerts I attend, on the theory that (1) it’s in the past and may not ever be repeated, and/or
At the West Coast Ragtime Festival last November I met for the first time Ray Skjelbred (pronounced SHELL-bred in case you haven’t heard it before),
The 2023 Charles H. Templeton, Sr. Ragtime and Jazz Festival was held on Thursday through Saturday, March 23-25 at Mississippi State University in Starkville. This
Some months ago, when I first saw the musician lineup for the 2023 Charles H. Templeton Ragtime and American Music Festival, Scott Kirby was listed.
Upon seeing his name, complete with umlaut, you might assume multi-instrumentalist T.J. Müller is of German heritage. You’d be mistaken. And with the first few
The 2022 San Diego Jazz Festival, the first held in person in three years, got underway on Thanksgiving Eve at the newly (since 2019) expanded
My review in these pages of the 2019 West Coast Ragtime Festival began with this statement: “Sometimes too much of a good thing is, well, too
In 1987, Charles H. Templeton, a 1949 graduate of Mississippi State University, donated his collection of 200 antique music players dating from about 1895 to
