October 2023

Tom Turpin (1871-1922) was a composer, saloon-owner, and powerful man in the black community of St. Louis at the turn of the century - even earning the nickname "Father of St. Louis Ragtime." Famously, his piano had to be raised on cement blocks for him to play as he was exceptionally tall and rotund, making his stomach an obstacle to...

William Yeates Hurlestone (1876-1906) was a student of Charles Villiers Stanford, who considered him his finest student - above such luminaries as Vaughan Williams and Holst, who also studied with Stanford. Hurlestone's talent was seen at an early age - his earliest compositions were published at the age of nine! Unfortunately, he suffered from bronchial asthma, ending his first musical...

Composer Riccardo Drigo (1846-1930) was an Italian composer and conductor who spent much of his career working in the opera and ballet theaters of St. Petersburg, though his career began and ended in Padua, Italy in the Veneto region. It is that region that inspires his beautiful work for viola (or cello) & piano (or organ) Serenatina Veneziana all'Antica. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYjiJamc78s...