Sonoma hosts free talk on ragtime legend Joseph Lamb

The event kicks off this week’s Ragtime Festival.|

Local music scholar John Partridge will discuss ragtime legend, “Joseph Lamb – Romantic Ragtimer,” at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 11 at the Sonoma Valley Library. The presentation will kick-off the 2017 Wine Country Ragtime Festival.

Most of the composers and performers from Ragtime’s “Golden Age” (1890 to 1920) were African-Americans from the Midwest. An exception was Joseph Lamb. He was a young man from New Jersey who fell in love with the music of Scott Joplin and began writing rags of his own sometime around 1900.

His ragtime compositions are lyrical and romantic and of such a high quality that he is now regarded as one of the greatest ragtime composers of that era.

John Partridge, music director of the Wine Country Ragtime Festival, will discuss Lamb’s life and work illustrating his talk with live performances of some of Lamb’s greatest compositions.

One of the “big three” composers from Ragtime’s “Golden Age”, Lamb created beautiful, lyrical compositions that have remained favorites with performers and audiences for nearly 100 years. Partridge will outline the life of this important American composer and perform several of Lamb’s most noted rags.

The lecture is a lead-up to the two-day “Wine Country Ragtime Festival.” For more information, go to the festival website at winecountryragtimefestival.com.

The event is free and open to all. The library is located at 755 W. Napa St., Sonoma.

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