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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Chart-topping American pianist Lara Downes reflects on the music of Scott Joplin through a 21st-century lens, revealing its many layers of genre-blurring subtlety and nuance. Joplin is revered as The “King of Ragtime". He’s acknowledged as a classically-trained composer of concert music whose ambitions were denied in his own time. He was both of those things, and more - an innovator who merged traditions and histories to make music at the crossroads of the American future. His story is ready to be retold. The fullness of Joplin’s artistry shines through in Downes’ open-hearted interpretations, heard in arrangements that transcend historical boundaries. The album is book-ended with music from Joplin's opera Treemonisha, and features a fluid suite of rags and drags that include collaborations with mandolinist Joe Brent, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and baritone Will Liverman in the world premiere recording of the heart-wrenching ballad A Picture Of Her Face.
    In Lara’s words: "There's a multi-faceted, timeless beauty to this music - a world of emotion and expression waiting to be experienced and embraced. I'm profoundly moved by Joplin's innovative creative vision, the depth of his blended musical roots, and the breadth of what grew from them."

    Includes unlimited streaming of REFLECTIONS: Scott Joplin Reconsidered via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.     ... more
    ships out within 5 days

      $25 USD or more 

     

  • *LIMITED EDITION* Cassette Tape
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Featuring expanded content including an audio version of Lara’s liner notes, and a live performance of “Prelude from Treemonisha” at Harlem Stage, February 14, 2022

    Includes unlimited streaming of REFLECTIONS: Scott Joplin Reconsidered via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 USD  or more

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

about

I probably learned The Entertainer that same year. Remember how everyone learned The Entertainer? The sound of that piece, played hesitantly and unevenly, with stumbles over the tricky parts, is burned into my memory. My friend Helga can still sing the tune with the fingering her piano teacher assigned: 1-2, 1-5, 1-5, 1-5, 2-3-4-5-2-3-4-1-3-2. Remember how the ice cream truck used to play The Entertainer on its rounds through your neighborhood? It was the sound of summer.

Joplin wrote The Entertainer in 1902, at the dawn of a new century. That year, Theodore Roosevelt became the first American president to ride in an automobile. The first American movie theater, the Electric Theater, opened in Pasadena. The Texas Oil Company/Texaco was founded; the first J.C. Penney and Target stores opened. Langston Hughes, John Steinbeck, Ansel Adams, Richard Rodgers and Tallulah Bankhead were all born in 1902, destined to define a new American cultural era.

credits

from REFLECTIONS: Scott Joplin Reconsidered, released February 4, 2022
Joe Brent - mandolin

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Lara Downes California

Lara Downes has been called “an explorer whose imagination is fired by bringing notice to the underrepresented and forgotten”. Her musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family, and collective memory, excavating the broad landscape of American music to create acclaimed recordings that serve as gathering spaces for her listeners to find common ground and shared experience. ... more

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