Noe Music to Begin New Year with Upbeat Piano

Aaron Diehl at his piano (courtesy of Noe Music)

In compensation for this month’s last minute announcement of the Noe Music Mainstage concert performed by the Friction Quartet, this site will account for the fact that the next offering in that series will be one of the first recitals in the new year. The recitalist will be pianist Aaron Diehl, and he has prepared a program entitled Stride & Ragtime. Through those two genres he will survey innovative compositions from the early twentieth century, which provided the seeds for the beginning of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. The program will include works by familiar (at least to me!) composers from that time, such as Scott Joplin (“Maple Leaf Rag”), Fats Waller (“Viper’s Drag”), and Eubie Blake (“Memories of You”). Other composers to be featured will be James P. Johnson, Jelly Roll Morton, and the less familiar Jesse Pickett.

This will be one of the series’ Sunday programs, beginning at 4 p.m. on January 12. As usual, the performance will take place in the Noe Valley Ministry at 1021 Sanchez Street, just south of 23rd Street. A Web page currently available for purchasing tickets. General admission is $45 with a special $60 rate for the limited first few rows. Students will be admitted for $15.