Finally . . . John Roache's CD of classic and contemporary ragtime, stride and novelty piano music is available and I know you are going to like it! These are all new recordings. Even though a few of the songs are available as MIDI sequences on John's web site, all of the songs included on the CD were digitally recorded using his Roland RD-500 Stage Piano. The disc also includes new MIDI sequences never released publicly. Six of the songs are premiere recordings, having never been recorded by anyone before. This is the perfect gift for a ragtime piano fan! It's also a nice way to share John's music with a person who does not have a computer.



Hot Kumquats

It would not be too much of a stretch of simile to say that Robin Frost is to contemporary "traditional" piano composition as William Shakespeare is to Elizabethan English: the latter has his own Dewey Decimal Number; the former may well some day deserve one. Frost's one-of-a-kind compositions are modern-day apparitions suggestive of the pianistic giants of the 'twenties and 'thirties. Although Frost is always clearly Frost, one can hear in his work the living spirits of the great ragmasters, stridemasters and swingmasters. Picture, if you will, the smile of James P. Johnson as he listens to "Three Lost Bodies" and "In Orbit"; or the (possibly reluctant) approval of Jelly Roll Morton as he hears "Alligator Gravy" and "Doin' the Shim Sham"; or the uncontained pride of George Gershwin had he had the opportunity to nibble on "Jelly Fish Omelet" or triumphantly puff on his cigar while giving ear to "Roger's Favorite." Nor, indeed, would it be difficult to predict Fats Waller's reaction to "Hot Kumquats." It would certainly be voiced in simple cadence: "Well, look-a here, look-a here!" The greatest pianotistas who ever put finger to ivory have cast their long shadows on Robin Frost's music and, with his new compact disc, John Roache has brought that music out into the bright sunshine.



Robin Frost Folios

Robin Frost was born in Washington, D.C., in 1930 and carried his family music tradition into the 1990s (and, no doubt, will continue to carry it into the next century). He was nurtured on popular music by listening to the Big Bands of the 30s and 40s, particularly by the recording of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Robin began doing some of his own improvising under the tutelage of his piano teacher, who had the expectation that the young prodigy would some day become a concert pianist.