Ragtime after-hours, WCRF 2015: Agitation Rag, New Era Rag

From the afterglow party following the 2015 West Coast Ragtime Festival, a couple of rags played party style. In the foreground at the beginning is John Reed-Torres, with Tom Brier on the far piano. Soon Tom is joined by Jeff Barnhart, and John is joined by Bill Edwards. Andrew Barrett joins in on his washboard necktie. Later still, Bill moves to join Tom on the second number.

The first rag is "Agitation Rag", published in 1915, which is one of only three surviving works by Robert Hampton. The sheet music can be downloaded here: http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/inhar...

The second is "New Era Rag" by James Scott, published in 1919. The sheet music can be downloaded here: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200033212/ or here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/New_Er...

You'll notice a major difference in how the sheet music is presented in these two pieces, despite being from the same publisher. The earlier work has large margins and the music is well spaced. It was printed on larger sheets of paper as well (something you can't quite tell from the PDFs). During the war, a conservation effort led to smaller paper sizes being used and packing more notes on the pages. After the war, this practice of using paper size of typically 8.5 x 11 inches continued, and remains in use today.

See the festival web site, http://www.westcoastragtime.com