Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered

Product Description

Chart-topping American pianist Lara Downes reflects on the music of Scott Joplin through a 21st-century lens, revealing it’s 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.”

Review

Not long before his death in 1917, Scott Joplin predicted that he would become a fixture of the American musical canon. A colleague later recalled him saying, “When I’m dead 25 years, people are going to begin to recognize me.” A full production of his “Treemonisha” ― one of the first operas by a Black American composer ― had proved elusive during his final decade, when he lived in New York. The reputation he did live to experience, as the so-called king of ragtime, was rooted in his earlier piano works written in Missouri, like “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer.” Even now, there are many different Joplins. The soundtrack for “The Sting,” the 1973 film featuring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, uses Joplin tunes for their evocation of easygoing yet audacious Americana…So although Joplin is an established fixture, public appreciation of his accomplishments remains fuzzy, unsteady. On a recent, wintry walk through Harlem, the pianist Lara Downes said that was what inspired her latest album, “Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered.” One goal, she said, was to “put together a somewhat comprehensive portrait of this musician who is really hard to pin down…I really want to liberate him from the two categories where people have tried to fit him: ‘king of ragtime’ or ‘greatest classical composer you’ve never heard of.’ I want to be super clear that I see him as an American innovator and cross-pollinator, and that the central truth in his music is that everything exists together and is there for the finding.” –The New York Times

Almost fifty years ago, a resurgence of interest in Scott Joplin (1868-1917) transpired when the popular soundtrack to The Sting included “The Entertainer.” Adapted by Marvin Hamlisch for the 1973 film and written by Joplin in 1902, the ragtime song became an unexpected hit and brought its creator a newfound level of recognition. While jazz artists had long been appreciative of Joplin’s work, his was a name that had grown less familiar to the general public, something the film changed dramatically, if only for a time. Now it’s pianist Lara Downes who’s reminding us of the bounty of riches to be found in his creative work and to make clear that there’s considerably more deserving of attention than one undeniably rousing song. Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered sits comfortably alongside much else the NYC-based pianist has done in celebrating the work of esteemed American artists such as Leonard Bernstein and Billie Holiday. Reconsideration here has to do with celebrating Joplin as a figure whose accomplishments far exceed the material for which he’s best known. There are selections from his opera Treemonisha, heartfelt ballads, and, naturally, rags, with some arrangements featuring Downes on solo piano and others pairing her with a partner or chamber ensemble. Consequently, a fuller portrait of the artist is achieved as well as a greater appreciation for the scope of Joplin’s artistry. The album’s the second full-length to appear on Downes’s Rising Sun Music, which she established in 2020 to explore the rich lineage of Black American composers. As she notes in a superb essay included with the release, Joplin’s music reflects an abundance of influences: “his father’s plantation melodies; his piano teacher’s sonatas and fantasies; decorous parlor waltzes in the homes his mother cleaned; [and] boisterous “jig-piano” tunes in the saloons and brothels where he played in his youth.” We hear in the album’s seventeen selections evidence of his classical roots, his ambitious stylistic range, and pieces that anointed him “The King of Ragtime” three years before his death. They’re typically short but abundant in charm and melody. Downes nicely frames the recording with two selections from Joplin’s 1911 opera Treemonisha, starting with a lovely solo piano prelude and ending with the more elaborately arranged “A Real Slow Drag,” featuring the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and the ensemble. Buoyancy is in generous supply when the album includes infectious tunes like “Weeping Willow,” “Euphonic Sounds,” “Swipesy,” and “Peacherine Rag,” all given spirited readings by Downes. A similarly effervescent character infuses “Maple Leaf Rag,” in an adorable rendition of his greatest hit. “Magnetic Rag,” his final published composition, sings as sweetly in their hands. Of course Reflections wouldn’t be complete without a treatment of “The Entertainer,” which Downes smartly fashions into a call-and-response duet with mandolinist Joe Brent. The equally lively “Elite Syncopations” charms as much when it pairs her with violinist Adam Abeshouse, and another highlight occurs when baritone Will Liverman joins the pianist for the world-premiere recording of “A Picture of Her Face,” a tender and touching lament. Two songs commemorate Joplin’s wife Freddie, who died a mere ten weeks after their wedding, “The Chrysanthemum” and “Bethena” (“the first to woo her, the second to mourn her,” in Downes’s words). Whereas affection veritably oozes from the former in its lyrical sparkle, the plaintive latter’s marked by an understandable yearning. While the album’s hardly one-dimensional, the material is generally uplifting in tone, which make which makes it consistent with Downes’s overall message. The work she’s done for years as a recording artist, curator, and supporter of numerous organizations has been grounded in positivity, inclusiveness, and historical awareness. –Textura

Pianist Lara Downes is on a roll. Following – or, rather, building – on last year’s New Day Begun, a revelatory survey of music by overlooked Black American composers, comes an effort to rethink Scott Joplin’s place in the canon. Titled Reflections, it does what no other Joplin disc (to my knowledge at least) attempts, namely to treat Joplin as a serious, versatile composer, not just the maker of enduring hits like The Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag. That can be a challenge. Even at his more reflective – like in the concert waltz, Bethena – Joplin’s writing maintains a charming façade. Knowing that the latter is a memorial to his wife of ten weeks provides some interpretive (and listening) perspective but achieving the right musical results without descending into bathos is difficult. Downes, though, has a wonderful grasp of Joplin’s style. Her playing always sings and the music never fails to dance. Most notably, Downes affectingly draws out its melancholy turns, like the snaking inner voices and minore turns of Reflection Rag and the languorous habanera rhythms of Solace. In effect, she treats Joplin’s music in the manner of a Strauss waltz: rightly popular yet ineffably sad. That’s not to say that Reflections is morose. Quite the opposite: for sweep, spirit, and character, Downes’ playing of Weeping Willow Rag, Peacherine Rag, and Euphonic Sounds is wonderful. Her readings, too, are all smartly weighted and voiced. As a result, there’s a welcome presence to much of the album’s fare. On several numbers, Downes is joined by “The Band” – violinists Judy Kang and Chiara Fasi, violist Tia Allen, cellist Yves Dharamraj, and clarinetist/saxophonist Kevin Sun – as well as baritone Will Liverman, mandolinist/vibuela-ist Joe Brent, violinist Adam Abeshouse, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. These collaborative selections – Maple Leaf Rag, Bethena, and the Magnetic Rag, particularly – serve to highlight the innate strength of Joplin’s musical ideas as well as the rich personality of his writing (the playful, dissonant turns and bent notes in Magnetic Rag are particularly well-served). Liverman and Downes pull off a touching rendition of Joplin’s maudlin song “A Picture of Her Face” while Abeshouse tosses off the unpredictable arrangement of Elite Syncopations in the best manner of Grappelli or Menuhin. And the disc’s grand finale – “A Real Slow Drag” from Joplin’s opera Treemonisha – brings together, in a slightly mystical blur, Downes, The Band, and the Youth Chorus. Taken together, it’s a thoughtful effort, played and sung with a fervency one doesn’t always associate with Joplin’s music. That it succeeds to well so well suggests that, indeed, he was a much better – and more important – composer than he’s usually credited for being. –The Arts Fuse