The Chronicle Review Corner

Ragtime was a forerunner of jazz and the main form of American popular music from about 1899 to 1917. It evolved via honky-tonk pianists along the Mississippi and elsewhere in the last decades of the 19th century and combined minstrel-show songs, African American banjo and off-beat dance rhythms. Typically the beat is regular and played on one hand, the other picking out the melody. You all know the sound: classic movie The Sting featured several of Joplin’s compositions, most famously The Entertainer; that’s not on here but the sound is the same, there or thereabouts.

Joplin apparently thought ragtime was a serious branch of classical music, and Nonken (professor of music at New York University’s Steinhardt School) leans towards the classical, though it’s pretty jaunty throughout and she sounds like she had fun. The composers featured are Arthur Marshall, Joseph Lamb, Louis Chauvin, Scott Hayden and Joplin but to be honest, unless you’re a ragtime aficionado, they all sound similar. This is a very easy album to listen to, somewhere between jazz and classical; no toes will be tapped but it’s entertaining and lively, and a lot of fun. Warmly recommended.

—Jeremy Condliffe