Elite Syncopations (Scott Joplin) improvised 2-piano duet; Barrett & Spitznagel

Andrew Barrett (KawhackitaRag) and Martin Spitznagel (spitzfire1138) had never played together before this moment at 1:30 a.m. Friday night / early Saturday during the weekend of the 2008 West Coast Ragtime Festival.

Sneaking into the room with the Yamaha pianos after hours, they played several tunes together, improvising their own duets. This was one of them.

"Elite Syncopations" is an early rag by Scott Joplin, published in 1902. It lends itself to plenty of improvisation.

Andrew is on the 9-foot Yamaha CFIIIS concert grand, while Martin is on the 6- or 7-foot piano (not sure which exact model Yamaha it is). Their improvisations end up getting each of them lost at one point!

Their YouTube profiles are:

http://www.youtube.com/user/KawhackitaRag
http://www.youtube.com/user/spitzfire1138

The festival is held every November in Sacramento, California. Please see http://www.westcoastragtime.com for information.

The woman behind the curtain is another ragtime performer, Mimi Blais. She was working on props for a ragtime comedy show to be held the following night.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• joplin
• scottjoplin
• elite
• syncopations
• piano
• duet
• yamaha
• cfiiis
• barrett
• spitznagel
• wcrf
• ragtime

[justwatchin43]

Sorry. A bit of improv is great, but this was massive overkill. No doubt they're great pianists -- but they took this simple piece and distorted it beyond recognition, completely missing the whole intent of the piece. It is tantamount to making a complicated duet out of the Moonlight Sonata...it doesn't improve it -- it ruins it.

[Keeper1st]

@justwatchin43 It's called having fun. And, as Martin correctly puts it, with ragtime, if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right.

[scottjop656]

nice message at the end old lady! ROCK ON!!

[Keeper1st]

That's no old lady; that's Mimi Blais, a fantastic pianist herself (there are many videos of her on YouTube if you search her name). She'd just bleached her hair that year.

[KawhackitaRag]

Sure I'd like to see and hear the other duets we did. I think they were a bit better than this one, actually.

If you got any of the duets I did with Morten Gunnar Larsen I'd like to see those too, since some of them went really well!

[Keeper1st]

Alas no, just the Sunburst Rag with you, Max and Morten, but that one has too many gaffes to be postable. Even Morten forgot how it went.

[KawhackitaRag]

@Keeper1st Hi Ron, I complete agree, I was not having fun because I didn't know the tune and wasn't playing it right! I know we should have done "Maple Leaf" or something else I knew instead! It's not Martin's fault... I have since learned not to play tunes I don't know in public!!! Ron, feel free to take this one down, too, unless Martin objects (or Mimi Blais objects)

[KawhackitaRag]

@justwatchin43 I agree, I didn't know what the hell I was doing, because I had never properly learned "Elite Syncopations" before I played it here, so I'm hitting all kinds of wrong chords as well as getting the melody terribly wrong in places. Martin does his level best to keep up (he seems to know the tune inside-out, and the duet would've sounded BEAUTIFUL had I just played it exactly as-written and left all embellishment to Martin).

[jd7x7jd]

sensational but keep the camera on the players man!

[RidleyXXX]

It was really good till 1:18

then I started to smile because it was like

you've been playing together since your birth :D

[iamastormtrooper]

it sems like fun to play Duet!! Great performence

[Tianhaku]

Man awesome impro (: