Mike Denham

This ragtime-era headline celebrated the world’s first pop music craze, 100 years ago.

Scott Joplin, the son of a slave, became the greatest of ragtime composers.

In his lifetime, his music was usually performed in low-down dives – and worse. He forecast that his music would take 50 years to achieve respectability, and he was right, with performances in the 1970s by the Royal Ballet of “Elite Syncopations”, piano concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the first professional performances of his opera “Tremonisha”, and the Oscar-winning ragtime soundtrack of the film “The Sting”.

Mike Denham is a fine pianist and raconteur who performs ragtime widely, at concert venues including London’s Purcell Room and St George’s Bristol, and at the leading UK vintage jazz festivals.

Great melodies, great stories about the musicians and the lives they led and, of course, that seductive ragtime rhythm.