The Ragtime Craze - piano recital/lecture by Robert Wyatt at JazzFest Falmouth at Highfield Hall and Gardens

In this combined lecture and piano recital, Robert Wyatt guides you through the development of ragtime. Although ragtime was first heard at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, it took another seven years for the new syncopated music to become the rage of the new century. By 1917, ragtime, as well as its most famous composer, Scott Joplin, had died. Learn more about the composers, their unique styles, the new dances created, and the ecstatic energy generated by ragtime music.

Steinway Artist Robert Wyatt has performed throughout the United States and internationally, gathering critical acclaim for sensitive and colorful solo and chamber music recitals. Featured on NPR and PBS broadcasts, Mr. Wyatt has also performed at the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the 92nd Street Y and Steinway Hall in New York, and Boston’s Jordan Hall and the Museum of Fine Arts....

read more

In this combined lecture and piano recital, Robert Wyatt guides you through the development of ragtime. Although ragtime was first heard at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, it took another seven years for the new syncopated music to become the rage of the new century. By 1917, ragtime, as well as its most famous composer, Scott Joplin, had died. Learn more about the composers, their unique styles, the new dances created, and the ecstatic energy generated by ragtime music.

Steinway Artist Robert Wyatt has performed throughout the United States and internationally, gathering critical acclaim for sensitive and colorful solo and chamber music recitals. Featured on NPR and PBS broadcasts, Mr. Wyatt has also performed at the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the 92nd Street Y and Steinway Hall in New York, and Boston’s Jordan Hall and the Museum of Fine Arts.

He has been a lecture/recitalist for the Smithsonian Institution for twenty years and served as an exhibition artist for their Piano 300 exhibition in 2000. As a “Smithsonian Scholar,” Mr. Wyatt has presented musical programs in school systems under the sponsorship of the Ford Foundation.

In 1987, Wyatt discovered several unpublished piano preludes by George Gershwin, and in the ensuing years has pursued research that has established him as one of the nation's foremost Gershwin scholars. His book, The George Gershwin Reader, was published by Oxford University Press in 2004. Mr. Wyatt is currently the Director of Music at Highfield Hall in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

show less