Blue Rags – Ian Munro, piano – [TrackList below] Tall Poppies TP186, 77:39 [Distr. by Albany] ****:
Ragtime was the predecessor of jazz as an original American musical genre, having its heyday between the last years of the 19th century and the end of WWI. It came out of the red-light districts of New Orleans and St. Louis and was based on Sousa marches with syncopation derived from African music. Scott Joplin was of course its best-known composer. Ragtime has had several revivals, and has been likened in its place in American music to the minuets of Mozart of the mazurkas of Chopin.
Pianist and composer Ian Munro pays homage in his opening selection to William Bolcom, who has written many different contemporary rags. All of the rags on the CD demonstrate that there is plenty of life in the hoary genre. Some of them sound similar to the “novelty” piano sheet music that was popular in the 1920s and 30s – and some of those actually were rags. The sound of these rags is most enjoyable and addictive. There is good humor about the pieces and much creativity within the rag structure.
Munro himself is in demand as both a composer and piano soloist. He has six previous CDs on the Tall Poppies label, of music by Australian composers and others. One of the CDs is of works by Ann Ghandar, whose Ragtime Suite is heard on this disc. She considers her rags to be characterized more by their inherent spirit than by an exactly-defined form. In her 11 quirky rags on the program Elena Kats-Chernin combines influences of klezmer, Russian music, tangos and Chopin with the “Australian vernacular.” The last composer on the program is of Uzbekian origin, who says he doesn’t try to parody the works of others but writes “according to their methods.” Among the composers he seeks to methodisize are Ives, Ravel, Debussy, Gershwin and Stravinsky – especially the latter’s well-known Ragtime. Yanov-Yanovsky is not without a sense of humor either: the CD omits the fourth of his seven Silhouettes because that one is titled “Cage” and consists only of 33 seconds of silence…
TrackList: MUNRO: Blue Rags; KATS-CHERNIN: Four Rags for IM, After Dinner Rag, Get Well Rag, Sunday Rag, Cocktail Rag, Revolving Doors, Alexander Rag, Zee Rag; GHANDAR: Ragtime Suite; GOEHNE: Blues; YANOV-YANOVSKY: Silhouettes.
– John Sunier
