Peter Mintun (born 1950), is an American pianist and historian of American music of the 1920s. [1] [2]
He was born into a musical family [3] : 456–57 in Berkeley, California. He grew up playing at parties and local events, and was drawn to American music of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s at an early age. [4]
From 1973 to 1989, he played regularly at the San Francisco restaurant L’Etoile, then at the Fairmont San Francisco. [3] : 456–57 He began playing in New York City, first at the New York Palace, and then spent seven years at Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel. He moved to New York City in 2001. [3] : 456–57 [5]
Mintun has released three of his own recordings of songs of the 1920s and 1930s: “Deep Purple,” “Grand Piano,” and “Piano at the Paramount,” which were called "exemplars of re-creations of music of that era." [3] : 337 He has also produced piano rolls, [6] and has appeared in movies, on television, and in concert halls. Early in his career, he accompanied disco icon Sylvester on a series of recordings of vintage jazz tunes.
He is an authority on composer Dana Suesse, and has championed her music. [3] : xi [4] He has been a consultant for numerous books on Jazz Age music. On buying an 1897 townhouse in Washington Heights, Manhattan, he became an informal neighborhood historian as well. [7]
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that had its peak from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces are typically composed for and performed on piano, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles.
James Price Johnson was an American pianist and composer. A pioneer of stride piano, he was one of the most important pianists in the early era of recording, and like Jelly Roll Morton, one of the key figures in the evolution of ragtime into what was eventually called jazz. Johnson was a major influence on Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, and Fats Waller, who was his student.
Harry "The Hipster" Gibson, born Harry Raab, was an American jazz pianist, singer, and songwriter. He played New York style stride piano and boogie woogie while singing in a wild, unrestrained style. His music career began in the late 1920s, when, under his real name, he played stride piano in Dixieland jazz bands in Harlem. He continued to perform there throughout the 1930s, adding the barrelhouse boogie of the time to his repertoire.
Ahmad Jamal was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. For six decades, he was one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz. He was a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master and won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy for his contributions to music history.
Henry Jones Jr. was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, arranger, and composer. Critics and musicians described Jones as eloquent, lyrical, and impeccable. In 1989, The National Endowment for the Arts honored him with the NEA Jazz Masters Award. He was also honored in 2003 with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. On April 13, 2009, the University of Hartford presented Jones with an honorary Doctorate of Music for his musical accomplishments.
Rudolf Serkin was a Bohemian-born Austrian-American pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century.
Art Lande is an American musician who was born in New York City, United States, on 5 February 1947.
Denny Zeitlin is an American jazz pianist, composer, and clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco. Since 1963, he has recorded more than 100 compositions and was a first-place winner in the DownBeat International Jazz Critics' Poll in 1965 and 1974. He composed the soundtrack for the 1978 science-fiction horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Nadine Dana Suesse was an American musician, composer and lyricist.
Jess Alexandria Stacy was an American jazz pianist who gained prominence during the swing era. He may be best remembered for his years with the Benny Goodman band during the late 1930s, particularly his performance at Goodman's 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall.
Samuel Blythe Price was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and jump blues pianist and bandleader. Price's playing is dark, mellow, and relaxed rather than percussive, and he was a specialist at creating the appropriate mood and swing for blues and rhythm and blues recordings.
QRS Music Technologies, Inc. is an American company that makes modern player pianos. It was founded as Q•R•S Music Company in 1900 to make piano rolls, the perforated rolls of paper read by player pianos to reproduce music. The company also produced shellac records in the 1920s and 1930s and radios beginning in the 1920s. Today, it makes modern, digital variations on the player piano and the recordings to drive them.
Michael Joseph O'Sullivan was an American jazz pianist.
Will Friedwald is an American author and music critic. He has written for newspapers that include the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Village Voice, Newsday, New York Observer, and New York Sun – and for magazines that include Entertainment Weekly, Oxford American, New York, Mojo, BBC Music Magazine, Stereo Review, Fi, and American Heritage.
Paul Lingle was an American jazz pianist. Terry Waldo, in "This is Ragtime", described Lingle as "an extremely important figure in the history of ragtime" for his "interpretations of the music were possibly the finest that have ever been done."
Todd Cochran is an American pianist, composer, keyboardist, essayist, and conceptual artist. Early in his career he was also professionally known as Bayeté. Cochran started his career as a teenager with saxophonist John Handy. Two years later he joined vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s Quartet, and made his jazz recording debut composing and performing on a benchmark album for Hutcherson, "Head On" that featured a nineteen-piece ensemble. The recording was critically hailed as cross-pollinating the evolving contemporary modal jazz, avant-garde sound of the 1970s. Cochran’s first solo project "Worlds Around the Sun" became a #1 jazz album and marked his entree into the jazz discussion. From the mid-1970s forward Todd has experimented with and incorporated synthesizers, electronic and mixed-media concepts in his creative projects while collaborating with a wide range of artists in the genres of jazz, art rock, pop, R&B, and twenty-first-century classical.
Bob Alberti, is an American pianist. He attended P.S. 185 and Fort Hamilton High School, both in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. His paternal family was a long line of musicians beginning with the Alberti Family Orchestra, seven people including his Great-Grandparents and their five offspring, all of whom were accomplished musicians. His father was an orchestra leader in the 1930s so it naturally led him into a life in the music industry.
Dana Reason is a Canadian composer, recording artist, keyboardist, producer, arranger, and sound artist working at the intersections of contemporary musical genres and intermedia practices.
Zan Stewart is an American jazz writer, musician and former disc jockey.
Arthur "Art" Resnick was a jazz pianist and composer who toured and recorded with several jazz greats. Some of the famous musicians Resnick accompanied include Freddie Hubbard, Nat Adderley, Benny Golson, James Moody, Eddie Harris, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Bobby Shew, Hal Crook and Richie Cole. He released three albums as leader, and played on at least 13 other recordings. He performed in Europe, Australia and the US, playing in major clubs in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Lisbon and Sydney.