What People are Saying About
The Egbert Van Alstyne

In a letter to a columnist friend, Dick Moulding wrote:

I'm writing to tell you about the wonderful, folkloric, and historic ragtime festival I just attended in Woodstock and Marengo.

If I were to recommend one event to your readers, it would be the evening concerts at the Woodstock Opera House. It's a lovely, small, old building with great acoustics, great sight lines, and no need of a PA. The piano was a Baldwin grand. The music was grand, too.

Bob Darch, now well into his seventies, entertained with song and a piano style that made that grand sound like a saloon upright. bob has spent a lot of his playing career in bars, but he has survived well as a player and as an entertainer. He also deserves credit for uncovering a lot of ragtime history and for helping the careers of legendary survivors like Joe Jordan and Eubie Blake. He is a showman.

Sue Keller is also a show (wo)man. With a stage personality all her own (slightly flavored by Phyllis Diller and Jerry Lee Lewis), she makes the music come alive. She plays the classics, breaks your heart with "Hard Hearted Hannah," and takes stride in stride.

Dick Zimmerman is the performer who most caught my attention as a pianist. He's a scholar and a historian, but his playing is anything but stuffy. Dick embodies the actual, lively, popular playing tradition that really was ragtime. Although he has the sophistication and subtlety of the European classical guys, his performances never lack energy or vitality. (His grand piano occasionally becomes a banjo.)

I dwell on the pianists because that's my specialty. The whole concert was actually a much more balanced presentation with lots of singing, two amazing bands, and even an audience sing along. Both the Etcetera String Band and the Elite Syncopators put on fascinating shows. This concert had pace, variety, visual appeal, humor and wonderful sound. One would not need any previous awareness of ragtime to be fully entertained and delighted.

After hours, at The Pub across the square from the Opera House, the music continued. In addition to the performers mentioned above, a young ragtime composer/performer from Chicago named Reginald Robinson sat in. Wow. This man is a story. Watch for him. Seek him out.

I sincerely hope there is a Second Annual Egbert Van Alstyne Ragtime Festival next year and that your paper promotes the heck out of it.