Scott Joplin - Pine Apple Rag - "3 Pianos on Fire" (HQ audio)

The opening performance of an hour-long piano-trio set is just getting warmed up with Scott Joplin's "Pine Apple Rag" from 1908. Pianists from left to right are Patrick Aranda, Frederick Hodges and Tom Brier.

I thought this was a suitable beginning to the set, as it is not a fast rag and the embellishments are tasteful (but Frederick was surprised to hear me say that).

(If you do think that this is "fast" then please just admit that you know very little about ragtime and don't make a fool of yourself by complaining. There will be fast numbers from this set coming up later.)

They're playing to a capacity room -- there were people watching from the hallway outside, unable to enter the room because it was at the maximum number of people allowed by law. This was Saturday evening, 15 August 2009, during the 11th annual Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival in California.

http://www.suttercreekragtime.com is where you will find details about the festival (which happens in mid-August every year).

The audio in this video was recorded from in front of the pianos by Rob Thomas. Some fidelity is lost in the conversion to a WMV, but it's still much better than my cheap camera with its auto-gain control (great for voice; terrible for music) and low-bitrate monophonic audio recording.