Savannah Music Festival LIVE 322 – Piano Showdown 2010 – Part Two

Original air date: week of September 12, 2010

When new styles of American music began to emerge at the end of the 19th century, the primary instrument at the center of these creations was the piano. Virtuosos such as ragtime stylist Scott Joplin created works like the “Maple Leaf Rag” that would sell over a million copies of sheet music alone. The first two decades of the 20th century would see jazz and blues compositions crafted by Jelly Roll Morton, W.C. Handy and Duke Ellington, and their results were the shape of American music to come. In this episode, we listen to solo, duo and quartet performances on two nine-foot Steinways featuring Marcus Roberts, Dick Hyman, Henry Butler and Gerald Clayton.