Results for "Early Jazz"

Funky Butt Club

Bob Effros

Born: December 6, 1900

Bryan Wright

Bryan S. Wright, Ph.D., is a pianist and Grammy-nominated musicologist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also the founder and executive producer of Rivermont Records, a label specializing in ragtime and jazz.

A native of Lynchburg, Virginia, Bryan first showed musical interest as a toddler and began classical piano lessons with Sandra Horwege at age 5, adding violin lessons two years later. In his early teens, Bryan became keenly interested in ragtime, jazz, and related styles, adding pieces by Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, and others to his repertoire. By 15 he was host of a popular weekly radio program, Sunday Night Nostalgia, heard in Central Virginia over WLVA, WVLR, and WLQE. The program featured big bands, vintage jazz, and “old-time radio” dramas (with occasional live in-studio dramas that Bryan directed). As an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia), he furthered his piano studies with Christine Niehaus, taking time to host a weekly ragtime radio program, Elite Syncopations, on WCWM. (The program provided the groundwork for the first 24-hour internet ragtime radio station, Elite Syncopations Radio, which Bryan operated from 2003 to 2010.)

Lovestruck Balladeers

The Lovestruck Balladeers are the band the mob boss hired to play his daughter’s wedding. Hailing from the American Midwest, Northeast, and Canada, these players, with their crumpled suits and otherworldly faces have collectively committed themselves to bringing old music into the 21st century with all the energy of a train disaster. They might whip out a lost melody from a forgotten mandolin folio, or they might play a Mexican waltz. They might push into a renegade re-arrangement of a swing standard, or get down with a country rag. They are the five scorpion sons of a West Virginia dance hall, a Little Italy tourist attraction, and a Oaxacan birthday party

Hoyle Osborne

Born: August 30, 1948

Hoyle Osborne — pianist, composer, arranger, producer, director, also plays mandolin, guitar, banjo, recorder, and pennywhistle — centered on American vernacular styles — ragtime, stride piano, early jazz and blues, old-time country music, folk, western swing — also plays and arranges Celtic, Latin, French, and other world styles, plus renaissance and baroque music. Hoyle and singer-songwriter-guitarist Jane Voss have performed and recorded together since 1976, appearing across North America and in England at many major music festivals, countless concerts, and on a number of National Public Radio programs