Piedmont Piano Company invites you to join us for an afternoon performance with pianists
Tom McDermott & Frank French

"Pan Americana" - From New Orleans to Rio
Piano Solos and Duets

Saturday, July 31 at 4PM
at Piedmont Piano Company's new store located at
18th & San Pablo, Oakland (1728 San Pablo Ave.)

donation requested in the amount of your choice

“Good music doesn’t get old” goes the saying. Where the imagination runs free no one can deny the potential for magic of the piano, so varied in its expressive and emotive power. A musical program that explores the connections between Europe, Africa and the New World seems especially fascinating when we take the long view about where all this music came from and where it might go.

Such a program will be presented Saturday, July 31 at 4 p.m. at Piedmont Piano Co, in Oakland by Tom McDermott and Frank French, two seasoned travelers in the musical realm of Pan-Americana . Trace it back far enough and you uncover a New World of styles. Jazz, Choro, Habanera, and Tango, just to name a few - the best of the old and the new.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

As early as the 1850’s New Orleans’ own Louis Moreau Gottschalk was demonstrating the flamboyant strain of New World Music to audiences in Paris and elsewhere on the European continent. His was an unique way of treating the piano with anew kind of special syncopation. Later it found its way into Ragtime and Jazz in North America and Choro, Danza and Habanera in points further south.

By the turn of the 20th century this music was flourishing in Dance halls throughout the Americas. The “Spanish Tinge” as it was known around New Orleans, was the special treatment and lilt applied to the popular music of the day. Jelly Roll Morton remarked that this element did more for the development of Jazz than any other type. In Brazil a new national style of music known as Choro was emerging. It received special treatment as a piano style in the music of Ernesto Nazareth. Meanwhile, the syncopated piano tradition had been going strong in Cuba since the middle of the 19th century.

PERFORMER INFORMATION

Tom McDermott, New Orleans Jazz musician Pianist and composer of wide-ranging and eclectic styles, including ragtime, trad jazz, choros,and musettes has also immersed himself in the connections of Jazz to Brazil,where choro music was called “Brazilian Ragtime” in its early years. Tom composes within a wide-ranging idiom, and updates the older styles while keeping them accessible to "roots" music lovers His wide-ranging skills have taken him around the world, and this summer he is driving around the American West, playing 30 concerts in July and August. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he grew up playing ragtime and traditional jazz before moving to New Orleans in 1984. In New Orleans he has added to the aforementioned styles a mastery of the R&B repertoire of Dr.John, Professor Lonhair and James Booker. He has released 10 CDs as a leader, which have garnered excellent reviews fromthe New York Times, Rolling Stone, Downbeat and other national sources.

Frank French, a California native, has traveled the world with his music. No stranger to the music of New Orleans himself has made the music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk a very important part of his repertoire. He as also become acquainted with the music of Ernesto Nazareth, Brazil's most important composer the late 19th and Early 20th Century. Following these models Frank has been building bridges between romantic and folk music in own his numerous compositions for piano with performances throughout the United States Latin America, Europe and Australia. Popularizing the old music and joining it with the new has become hallmark of his style. Frank has produced numerous recordings, music festivals, and radio and television series.