2023

Elliott Adams

Elliot has been playing ragtime since age 10 and is now known internationally as a ragtime player, collector, historian, writer, and composer.

His extensive collection of ragtime, blues, and early jazz sheet music is available to researchers, musicians, and publishers. He has several notable solo recordings on the Stomp Off and PianoMania labels.

Elliott is an intrepid golfer and a practicing dermatologist

Heidi Evelyn Arnott

Heidi Arnott is a versatile music educator having taught Voice, piano and choir, as well as worked as a musical theatre instructor and choir director. She ministers music through private piano and voice students. You can hear Heidi vocalizing as a singer/band leader in a Bay Area jazz band. At the festival, she will be teaming up with Clint Baker and Frederick Hodges. Also, feel free to ask her about her interests in coffee, outdoor adventures and Lindy Hop!

https://www.liveoakacademy.org/about/faculty/heidi-arnott/

Nick Arteaga

Nick's interest in ragtime began as a teenager in his hometown of Sacramento, where he taught himself to play on his grandmother's player piano. Later, after some formal lessons with Dr. Robert Bowman, he began performing professionally in a Chinese restaurant, accompanying singers at universities and working as a church musician. Nick began taking ragtime seriously after checking out a Sacramento Ragtime Society meeting around 2011.

A few years later he became a regular performer at the West Coast Ragtime and Sutter Creek Festivals. Although Nick specializes in ragtime, he has also introduced ragtime festival audiences to obscure Central and South American syncopated piano music as well as his own intricate ragtime compositions. Besides his musical activities Nick has helped run his parents investment business in Chico, CA and has also worked in government. He currently resides in Chico, in a small 1920s house that he restored.

Brandon Au

Au Brothers

Trombonist, Brandon Au, along with his brothers (Gordon, Brandon and Justin) has been playing the traditional jazz of New Orleans ever since their uncle, High Sierra trombonist Howard Miyata, turned them on to the music at an early age. Among them, they have amassed three music degrees and performed with various ensembles at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Preservation Hall, and the Sydney Opera House, as well as at the Monterey, Redwood Coast, Montreux, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage, & North Sea jazz festivals.

Brandon and Justin Au are making their first appearance at the West Coast Festival will be playing with the Freebadge Serenaders and also teamed-up with Neville Dickie, Marty Eggers and Clint Baker.

https://www.facebook.com/Brandon.Toshi.Au/

Justin Au

Au Brothers

Justin Au, performer and Music Educator with the Vacaville Unified School District, is an alumnus of the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society’s jazz education programs and one of the finest high-school jazz programs in the nation. Playing a variety of jazz styles, he has toured New York, Japan, Puerto Rico, China, and Brazil. On the national festival circuit, Justin has filled in on trumpet for many well-known groups such as the Creole Syncopators, Steelin' Dan, High Sierra JB, Cornet Chop Suey JB, Cell Block 7, Viper Six, and more.

He has also appeared as a guest trumpeter with many more festival favorites. Justin can be heard regularly with various groups such as The Red Skunk Band, Au Brothers Jazz Band, Harley White Jr. Orchestra, Justin has also served as co-director of the official youth band of the Basin Street Regulars Jazz Society in Pismo Beach and has worked with numerous school ensembles both as a clinician and substitute teacher. Look for the Au brothers performing with with Feebadge Serenaders, Neville Dickie, Marty Eggers and Clint Baker. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-au-85766925

Clint Baker

Clint started playing clarinet in 1980. His first school band director needed trombonists and quickly switched Clint to trombone. In the years that followed he would learn additional instruments including tuba, tenor banjo, and drums. He has appeared at the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Jubilee and has performed at the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Jubilee (later called the Sacramento Music Festival) every year from 1988 until its demise in 2017.

In 1990 he created Clint Baker's New Orleans Jazz Band (1990–2000). For over 20 years, Clint has led a New Orleans style jazz ensemble, The Cafe Borrone All Stars, at Cafe Borrone in Menlo Park. Clint also performs regularly with seven other well-known bands and he is a noted jazz educator.

http://www.clintbakerjazz.com/

Ramona Baker

Multi-talented Ramona S. Baker is the daughter of Clint Baker and sister of Riley Baker. She is a pianist, historian, collector, artist, and a contributing writer to The Syncopated Times. Ramona has been a regular youthful pianist at the West Coast Ragtime Festival since 2012. Her most focused interest lies in the studio pianists and musicians, such as Fred Hylands, Frank P. Banta, and Justin Ringleben. Ramona Baker is well-known to our festival goers for her seminars on these unjustly forgotten figures from the early years of the recording industry.

http://theoldrecordgal.blogspot.com/

Jack and Chris Bradshaw

Jack and Chris are classically trained ragtime piano duo artists from Gilroy, California, righteously proclaim that, with 88 keys and 20 fingers at their disposal, they have the most piano keys held down at any one time — many of them right! Not going for speed, their quest is for clarity and classic ragtime charm as their fingers dance off the keyboard to Jack's four-hand arrangements of popular rags, cakewalks, marches and novelty numbers. Jack also performs solos to round out their programs.

Besides performing at West Coast, this lively pair gets around and has appeared at the Sutter Creek, Scott Joplin, Blind Boone, Shaniko, Santa Cruz, and the Fresno Flats Ragtime Festivals, and at Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo. The rollicking road to ragtime thus far has taken them to eleven states, Canada, and even to Zürich, Switzerland for a youth ragtime competition and to play a few tunes. They also play in the Ragnolia Ragtette with the Drivons and as the Piano & Pipes Ragtime Trio with theater organist, William Coale.

Isaiah Burton

Isaiah, who lives in Fairfield, California, is 18 years old and a freshman at Biola Univerity as a piano performance major. After competing in the 2019 West Coast Youth Competition, he has been a youth performer in the past three West Coast Ragtime Festivals. In February 2022, Isaiah performed a concerto movement with the Solano Symphony Orchestra as a prize winner in Solano Country's Young Artist’s Competition.

While under the tutelage of Dr. Jana Olvera during his high school years, he now studies with Dr. Li-Shan Hung. Eclectic by nature, Isaiah loves playing both ragtime and classical music and exploring African-American Spirituals, Mexican Rancheras, and playing classical/flamenco guitar. Outside of music, he enjoys outdoor activities, poetry and literature, and spending time with his family and friends.

Michael Chisholm

Michael is currently residing in Auburn, California, has been an active participant in the California ragtime circuit since 2013. Originally from Sugar Land Texas, he took an interest in ragtime at a young age when he saw Jo Ann Castle perform on reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show. At age 10, his family was given a piano and he immediately started teaching himself to play.

Constant combing of the Internet for sheet music and information began his interest in collecting original copies of ragtime music. The scope of his collecting has broadened from just ragtime to all music printed from 1800 to 1950. To date, his collection numbers over 75,000 sheets. Composition quickly became a knack for him, having penned several rags, cake walks, marches, and intermezzos since learning to play piano. Michael is currently on the Board of Directors for the West Coast Ragtime and Historic Sutter Creek Ragtime Festivals, and has been featured in the Santa Cruz Ragtime, Orange County Ragtime, and Old Town Music Hall Ragtime Festivals.

Crown Syncopators

The ragtime trio, formed in 2007, consists of Virginia Tichenor on drums, Marty Eggers on tuba, and Frederick Hodges on piano. The trio plays regularly to enthusiastic crowds of music lovers at legendary waterfront restaurant Pier 23 in San Francisco and is expanding its territory to include ragtime and jazz festivals around the country.

The trio derives its name from the brand name of the piano at Pier 23, which happens to be a rare 1909 art-case, four-pedal upright piano manufactured by the Crown Piano Company. This very instrument has the added distinction of having belonged at different times to Bay Area jazz piano greats Burt Bales and Ray Skjelbred. In 2007, Skjelbred sold the piano to Marty Eggers, who arranged to house it at Pier 23, where Bales played for over a decade in the 1950s and '60s.

Jared DiBartolomeo

Jared is an engineering graduate of University of California at Irvine. A lifelong enthusiast of ragtime and vintage piano music, Jared was first exposed to ragtime at the age of two when his father played the Maple Leaf Rag on the home piano. The syncopated rhythms left an impression on Jared, and at age eight he started taking formal piano lessons. After receiving a folio of Scott Joplin’s rags and some recordings, Jared dived deeper into ragtime enthusiasm.

For nearly as long as he has had an interest in ragtime, Jared has been a fan of mechanical musical instruments. He currently owns an Ampico reproducing piano and a collection of piano rolls mastered by such artists as Adam Caroll, Edgar Fairchild, J. Milton Delcamp, and Henry Lange, from which he draws inspiration.

Jared first participated in the West Coast Ragtime Festival in 2005 and has had numerous opportunities to perform at San Francisco’s Pier 23, the SRS Ragtime Corner at the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, the Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival, and the Santa Cruz Ragtime Festival.

Neville Dickie

A native of England's County Durham, Neville Dickie is among the most accomplished stride and boogie-woogie pianists on either side of the Atlantic. As jazz authority Tex Wyndham suggests in his liner notes to Dickie's "Eye Opener," he's "a world-class keyboard shark." A regular performer on BBC Radio, Dickie's made hundreds of appearances as a soloist or with his trio and is one of the few British jazz players to score with a hit single - "The Robins Return" - in 1969. He continues to be embraced by British jazz enthusiasts, and his 1975 album, "Back to Boogie," has sold more than 100,000 copies. He's produced scores of records and can be heard on hundreds of jazz recordings including several recordings with French pianist Louis Mazetier. As John Featherstone writes in Storeyville, "Neville Dickie's devastatingly accurate left hand shows why, at any stride convention, he'll have a place reserved at the top table."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Dickie

Richard Dowling

Richard has been hailed by The New York Times as "an especially impressive fine pianist, appears regularly across America in solo recitals, at classical chamber music festivals, ragtime & jazz music festivals, and as guest soloist in concerto engagements with symphony orchestras.

Career highlights include performances in New York at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, The Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, The Metropolitan Club, and the 92nd Street Y. Mr. Dowling has presented solo recitals in the Far East, South America, Australia, Africa, and Europe. He has been a regular featured artist at the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Missouri, the West Coast Ragtime Festival in California, and the Juneau Jazz & Classics Festival in Alaska among others.

https://www.richard-dowling.com/

Steve and Robyn Drivon

The Drivons became part of the West Coast ragtime movement in 2003 and have since become known to many ragtime fans and musicians as familiar and welcomed performers in festivals and concerts in California. Since 2009, the Drivons have played as a duo. Robyn on tuba while Steve croons some of their favorite ragtime era songs adding rhythm and chords on his tenor guitar.

Over the years, Steve and Robyn have enjoyed performing with JARS featuring Anne and Jeff Barnhart, The Porcupine Ragtime Ensemble, and with Chris and Jack Bradshaw as The Ragnolia Ragtette.

Marty Eggers

Marty is described by Terry Waldo as having "an encyclopedic knowledge of the ragtime and early jazz repertoire". He has played with numerous Bay Area jazz and ragtime groups, including the Yerba Buena Stompers, John Gill's San Francisco Jazz Band and the Black Diamond Jazz Band. In addition to solo piano, Marty appeared at the festival for years as bassist with the Bo Grumpus Trio.

He has also appeared with the Tichenor Family Trio (Trebor Tichenor, Virginia Tichenor, and Marty).

Marty helped found the Sacramento Ragtime Society in 1982. He is a past president of the West Coast Ragtime Society.

Kevin Gunia

Kevin is a composer, pianist, and educator. He has composed solo and chamber works, large ensemble music, and collaborative pieces such as opera scenes and works for dance. His work has been recognized through the NJ Music Educators Association and the National Association for Music Education, as well as through the Mason Gross Extension Division. Gunia is the recipient of the 2021–2022 George Lynn Memorial Award. He has written for ensembles such as ~Nois Saxophone Quartet, the Ivalas Quartet (quartet in residence at the Juilliard School), and the Boulder Altitude Directive.

Gunia also works as a freelance accompanist and music transcriber. He has transcribed the ten disc improvisations of George Gershwin, as well as works by Dana Suesse and Jelly Roll Morton.

As a pianist, Gunia has performed solo recitals, as well as collaborative programs. He has been a featured performer at the Historic Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival in Sutter Creek, CA, and the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, CA. Composers have written new works for Gunia to perform.

https://www.kevingunia.com/

Frederick Hodges

Frederick is hailed by the press as one of the best concert pianists in the world, and has established a reputation specializing in late romantic music as well as Ragtime, Broadway and Hollywood musicals of the first half of the 20th century by America's best composers, such as George Gershwin and Cole Porter. He maintains a busy concert schedule of stage, television, radio, and film appearances around the globe.

Additionally, he is a much sought-after silent-film accompanist for both live performances and DVD. He performs regularly at the Hollywood Heritage Museum, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in California, the Cinecon Film Festival in Hollywood, The TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and at other silent film festivals around the country. He also performs at music festivals such as the Sacramento Music Festival, the West Coast Ragtime Festival, and the Sedalia Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival. His website is www.frederickhodges.com.

http://www.frederickhodges.com/

Stan Isaacs

A folk dance leader and teacher in the San Francisco Bay area, Stan began teaching folk dance around 1958 while attending Antioch College in Ohio. In the mid-1980s, he discovered Vintage Dancing when he sponsored a workshop with Richard Powers at his folk dance group. Around 1986, Stan began teaching vintage dancing, with the help and participation of Richard Powers, who found that by using choreography, folk dancers could learn vintage dancing more easily.

Stan and his wife, Karen, started the Pomander Club, a venue for Vintage Dancing in Palo Alto, California that met weekly for many years. Stan will be presenting a workshop talking about his experiences with vintage dancing.

https://www.socalfolkdance.org/master_teachers/isaacs_s.htm

Vincent Johnson

Vincent Matthew Johnson is one of the most accomplished Ragtime composers alive; though young, he has already written several masterpieces in both Classic and Novelty styles. A handful of his works are decidedly eclectic. Vincent began composing piano solos and songs as a pastime and now has a collection of more than 30 pieces. While his pieces are composed in various syncopated styles, including foxtrots (“Dancing Daffodils”), cakewalks (“Betty Crocker’s Cakewalk”), folk rags (“The Mother Lode Rag”), and tone poems (“Starlight”), a large majority of his compositions are in the novelty style popular in the 1920s & 1930s. These pieces reflect the influence of his favorite composers: Zez Confrey, Arthur Schutt, Roy Bargy, Lothar Perl, Fred Elizalde, Billy Mayerl, George Gershwin, Sasha Tsfasman, and Claude Debussy.

Charlie Judkins and Miss Maybell (Lauren Sansaricq)

We are delighted that newlyweds Charlie Judkins and Miss Maybell are participating in the West Coast Ragtime Festival this year. They share a mutual, lifelong passion for pre-1920s popular music and have complimentary musical skills. With a wink to the pretentious barrelhouse hoi palloi, thus was born, “Miss Maybell” who is accompanied by Charlie.

Adding to Lauren’s and Charlie’s combined strength is that their repertoire is built largely on obscure songs and verses, happily and skillfully, imbued with life, lilt, and spontaneity to boot. Lauren and Charlie are themselves serious early 78 RPM record collectors. They know, and revere, the details about the recordings of the pioneering composers, instrumentalists, vaudevillian singers, and lyricists, and familiarize themselves with the nuanced vocal and instrumental differences between versions of given songs sung by the same singers on various “takes” and record labels. These are a "not to miss" duo!

https://www.missmaybell.com/

Carl Sonny Leyland

Carl Sonny Leyland was born & raised on the South Coast of England, growing up close to the city of Southampton.

At age 15 Leyland discovered boogie woogie and Leyland was inspired to go to the piano & begin on a path that would become his life's purpose. Sonny’s repertoire now includes authentic blues & early rock & roll stylings, rockabilly & western swing, ragtime & early jazz styles which has proven to be a versatile combination for success over the years.

Whether playing solo or with others, Sonny’s playing displays an infectious spontaneity, providing plenty of surprises for the listener. While he possesses the necessary vocabulary to pay tribute to the greats of old, he refuses to limit himself to this & prefers to let each performance be an opportunity to say something new. His repertoire spans the Ragtime era to the 1950s and includes original “Leyland” material.

https://www.carlsonnyleyland.com/

Max Libertor

Being aged 15, Max is a new youth performer to the festival lineup. Known for his masterful playing of Tom Brier and other ragtime pieces, he was discovered as a walk-in at last year's West Coast Ragtime Festival where he wowed us all.

Since then his life has been blooming. He is this year's winner of the Ragtime Kid award at the Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia. He was also a youth performer on this year's Sutter Creek Festival program.

T. J. Müller

TJ Müller is a bandleader and multi-instrumentalist based out of St. Louis, where he directs both The Arcadia Dance Orchestra and The Gaslight Squares. Although based in Missouri, T.J. was born in Canterbury, England. Always traveling from a young age, T.J. began playing traditional jazz cornet with his family band led by his father, Rev. Anton Muller. While living in Edinburgh, T.J. was offered a job touring with the Americana group Pokey Lafarge.

After leaving the Lafarge ensemble, T.J. established his own groups in St. Louis and began specializing in the historic jazz music of Missouri. T.J. can be found performing around St. Louis weekly, preaching about good St. Louis music from Ragtime to Swing.

https://tjmullermusic.com/

Don Neely

Don Neely & Carla Normand

Don Neely is the founder of the long-running Royal Society Jazz Orchestra. The California-based bandleader, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer has more than 40 years of musical experience playing tunes from the 1920s and 1930s. He expanded the audience for hot syncopated music beyond the Bay area without sacrificing authenticity. Dapper Don, with his silver hair and mustache making him look like the elder statesman he has become, still performs around California with other bands and his own 11-piece Royal Jazz Society Orchestra.

Don is a new addition to the West Coast Ragtime Festival this year and will be performing with Carla Normand.

https://royalsocietyjazzorchestra.com/don-neely.html

Carla Normand

Don Neely & Carla Normand

Carla has recorded with the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra and has a solo album entitled, "Just You, Just Me," featuring love songs accompanied by an outstanding sextet led by Don Nealy. Carla's concert and other performances with the orchestra have taken her all across the country, including opening nights for the S.F. Symphony, S.F. Opera, S.F. Ballet, ocean cruises and scores of San Francisco society events.

Carla is a new addition to the West Coast Ragtime Festival and will be performing with Don Neely.

https://royalsocietyjazzorchestra.com/carla-normand.html

   
Left to Right:

Michael Chisholm, piano
Susanne Wong, violin
Judy McCall, cello
Adam Roderick, drums
Mike Hart, tuba
Sue Horn, flute
Mike Young, clarinet
Brian Gayek, trombone
James Rogers, leader, cornet

Pacific Coast Ragtime Orchestra

PCRO was organized in 1980 by music teachers in coastal towns south of San Francisco, and brings the sounds of the Ragtime Era to life. PCRO's spirited, authentic style invigorates the music of such ragtime legends as Scott Joplin, Joseph Lamb, Eubie Blake, James Scott, Percy Wenrich and Irving Berlin.

Will Perkins

Will Perkins has been performing at ragtime and jazz festivals since the age of 14. His love for traditional jazz and ragtime piano has led him to perform at music festivals around the United States and beyond. Will has been a featured performer at the Bohem Ragtime and Early Jazz Festival in Kecskemet, Hungary, and at the Buenos Aires Ragtime Festival in Argentina. He has also performed at the West Coast, Scott Joplin, Sutter Creek and many other festivals around the country. When Will isn’t playing the piano, you will probably find him working on them! Professionally, Will is a piano technician and currently resides in Idaho Falls, Idaho with his wife McKenna.

https://willperkinspianos.com/will-the-musician

Tadao Tomokiyo

Appearing for the second time at the West Coast Ragtime Festival is Tadao Tomokiyo from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is seventeen years old and in the 12th grade at Winchester Thurston School. Tadao discovered the piano when he was three and hasn’t stopped playing since! He studies classical piano, organ, and french horn, but ragtime holds a special place in his heart. 

Tadao's classical training also includes Interlochen, the Tanglewood Young Artists Piano Program, and the InterHarmony Festival, in Acqui Terme, Italy.  He was recently named winner of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra's conducting competition, and led the orchestra in selections from Bizet's Carmen.

Tadao has been featured on the West Coast Ragtime Society’s Spotlighting Ragtime Youth concert and the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Festival’s Junior Showcase. In addition, he has performed at the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival for the past few years, and was selected as the second Ragtime kid of the year 2022. Tadao has it all! Come and see for yourself! 

John Reed-Torres

A South-Central Los Angeles native, John recalls hearing ragtime for the first time as a child when he heard an ice cream truck creeping along to the strains of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer".
Right then and there the ragtime bug bit him and sparked his love for a wide range of antiquity.

https://www.facebook.com/ragtimejohn/

Greg Sabin & Patrick Skiffington

Freebadge Serenaders

When asked what kind of music their band plays, they often respond that "band" is a strong word for what they do. Having grown up in the jazz-infused confines of Sacramento, the Serenaders bring a unique, and often ridiculous, approach to music. Mixing faithful old standards, unlikely covers of popular songs, and a gaggle of clever originals, the Serenaders appeal to every age group. Especially yours.

Banjo, vocals: Greg Sabin
Washboard, vocals: Patrick Skiffington

https://www.facebook.com/discountjazz/

Anthony Sarginson

Anthony Sarginson has been studying piano since the age of 13, after an awe-inspiring trip to the Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival. He is an avid performer of Tom Brier's work and holds importance on interpreting pieces in ways one would not expect.

Anthony has been a West Coast Youth performer since 2017 and also has appeared at the Oakhurst and Sutter Creek Festivals. Now at 22, he is completing his final year in achieving his Bachelors degree in instrumental performance at Fresno State University. 

Anthony's dedication as a collaborative pianist has brought him to new heights. He is the pianist alongside the Wind Symphony of Clovis, a group of Professional musicians, including several Fresno State faculty members as well as members of the Fresno Philharmonic. He also performs with the Symphony orchestra at his university under the direction of Thomas Lowenheim and has plans to compete in the Spring 2024 with Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto. A successful audition would allow him to perform the work with a full orchestra

Sean Sharp

Your Ragtime 1903 Emcee

Sean Sharp is glad to be back at the West Coast Ragtime Festival and will be the host for this year’s historical show, Ragtime 1903. He has performed with The Great Nickelodeon Show at the Turner Classic Movies Festival in Hollywood, the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy, the Telluride Film Festival, the Niles Essanay Film Museum and San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, among other venues.

At past West Coast Ragtime Festivals, Sean has presented illustrated-songs shows; he has worked with illustrated songs for over twenty years and has created shows for the AMICA Convention in Canada, the Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival, the Shasta Silent Film Festival and the Corte Madera Centennial’s Ragtime Night festivities.

He is an original member of San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon Productions and has appeared in over twenty of that company’s productions. His other credits include singing in the San Francisco Grace Cathedral Men’s Choir and performing with the Lamplighters and down the California coast with the Great American Melodrama.

Martin Spitznagel

Martin has been hailed as a remarkable, astonishing, and "face-melting" musical talent. His flying fingers and sparkling repertoire have left audiences across the country enthralled with America's first popular music, Ragtime. Whether performing the masterworks of Scott Joplin or the score to Star Wars, Martin is truly at home on the piano bench.

He found success early, winning a Yamaha Disklavier at the age of 14 in Calliope Media's nationwide Crazy for Ragtime competition. His entry, chosen from the hundreds of submissions by a panel of judges that included world-renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, coincided with the centennial of the birth of ragtime music in 1897.

Despite this early success, Martin was largely self-guided until 1998, when he met Eastman School of Music pianist and pedagogue Dr. Tony Caramia, who challenged him to "find the surprise" in every performance. Under Caramia's tutelage, Martin flourished, developing a keen ear for melody, a gift for improvisation, and a talent for composition.

https://www.martinspitznagel.com/

Bub & Petra Sullivan

A Sacramento native, Petra has a degree in Music and teaches violin and piano. Bub, originally from Chicago, also studied classical piano as a child, then later took up string instruments before discovering ragtime.

Sullivans / Drivons

These four offer an array of contemporary and classic rags, including Latin tangos and waltzes, plus ragtime and novelty songs. Among the pillars of the Sacramento Ragtime Society, the Sullivans have been part of the ragtime world for over 20 years. They have had the rather unique pleasure of being interviewed and performing in China for Shanghai television.

Petra Sullivan, piano; Bub Sullivan,mandolin/cünbus/vocals; Robyn Drivon, tuba; Steve Drivon, percussion/trombone/vocals.

Adam Swanson

Adam is one of the world's foremost performers of ragtime and early American popular music, including ragtime, early jazz, the Great American Songbook, and more.Although he is only 26 years old, Adam has been a featured performer and lecturer at ragtime and jazz festivals across the United States, and he is the only four-time winner of the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest.

He made his New York debut in Carnegie Hall at the age of 19, where he performed with Michael Feinstein.  He has worked with such musicians as Toronto's John Arpin, former rock star Ian Whitcomb, and legendary 1950s recording artist Johnny Maddox, who is one of Adam's greatest influences.

Adam performs every summer at the historic Strater Hotel in Durango, Colorado, where he is musical director of the new Durango Ragtime and Early Jazz Festival.

https://www.adamgswanson.com/

Virginia Tichenor

Virginia has been consumed by ragtime her entire life, as the daughter of Trebor Tichenor, the noted ragtime scholar, pianist, collector and founder of the St. Louis Ragtimers. She studied music at the St. Louis Community Association for the Arts and took advanced training from concert pianist, John Phillips. Always at the crossroads of the ragtime revival, her parental home houses the world's largest library of ragtime sheet music and piano rolls. Virginia grew up with legends like Eubie Blake, Max Morath and Butch Thompson chatting in her own living room.

Her father was advisor-confidant for most of the ragtime community, so Virginia often heard new rags when they were forming in the minds of their composers. The topic of her college research project? The ragtime revival, of course! In 1998, Virginia released her first solo recording, a CD entitled Virginia's Favorites. It includes four two-piano duets with her father, Trebor.

Matt Tolentino

Matt was born in Dallas, Texas. Music has always been the center of Matt's life. His musical adventures began at age 11, playing clarinet in his elementary school band. Although he is a multi-instrumentalist — playing accordion, clarinet, saxophone, tuba, piano, tenor guitar, banjo, and mallet percussion — the accordion is Matt's first musical "love."

Matt eventually put together his 18-piece Singapore Slingers Orchestra, which plays a wide variety of musical styles dedicated to ragtime, traditional jazz, and popular songs of 1895 to 1935.

He also leads The Matt Tolentino Band, as well as a polka band, The Royal Klobasneks. His ensembles perform in various sizes clubs, festivals, special events, and private parties.

https://www.matttolentino.com/

Bruce Vermazen

With his bachelors and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from Stanford University, Bruce Vermazen became a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California Berkeley. In 1978, he became interested in ragtime and began performing cornet with the Chrysanthemum Ragtime Band. He later served as the band's music director and announcer. In the 1980s, Vermazen began publishing articles on historic ragtime musicians in the San Francisco area and began playing cornet with the San Francisco Starlight Orchestra.

After retiring in 2000, he published That Moaning Saxophone: The Six Brown Brothers and the Dawning of a Musical Craze. During the early 2000s, Vermazen also became a member of the Hillcrest Wind Ensemble. In 2005, he and Bob Pinsker founded the recently defunct Heliotrope Ragtime Orchestra.  He will present a seminar at this year's festival.

Galen Wilkes

Galen Wilkes holds one of the most extensive resumes in the ragtime field. Since the 1970s, he has delved into many facets of the music and its era. He wears many hats as composer, arranger, broadcaster, historian, writer, lecturer, and producer.

He began composing rags in the ‘70s and soon moved to radio hosting The Ragtime Years in New York. After moving to California, he was back on the air with It’s Rag Time! in the 1980s. He founded and directed The Palm Leaf Ragtime Orchestra to produce concerts and revive ragtime dances with a Ragtime Ball, complete with cakewalk contest. This spread among the festivals. In the early ‘90s he founded the New England Ragtime Festival which he ran in his home state of Connecticut.

His massive research has been used to write articles and liner notes, working for The Rag-Time Ephemeralist, Basta Records, Pearl Records, and others. He has penned a number of popular piano rags, played now for decades among the standard rag repertoire: The Creeks of Missouri, Sedalia Stomp, Last of the Ragtime Pioneers, Spanish Moss and others. They are available in his many folios and his CD, Ragged Rhythm.

Web: galenwilkes.com YouTube: Wilkes Americana Archive