Gary Rametta, Bill Mitchell, Paul Orsi, Brad Kay, Eric Marchese, Marea Boylan, Jimmy Green & Andrew Barrett

RagFest 2014 was a big hit with fans, drawing attendance of 130 during the two-day festival (October 18 and 19) at Steamers Jazz Club and Café in downtown Fullerton.
Highlights of the weekend included the festival debuts of The White Star Line Ragtimers and soloists Paul Orsi and Tim Rotolo.
The White Star group is led by Frank Sano, whom festival audiences know as the founder of the Albany Nightboat Ragtimers. Orsi was a Disneyland pianist from 1983 to 1993. After a more than 20-year absence from the public eye, he returned to ragtime performance in 2014 and was RagFest’s headliner, appearing on both days of the festival. At age 21, recent college graduate Rotolo had already appeared at several Northern California festivals – notably the West Coast and Sutter Creek ragtime festivals – before making his first appearance at RagFest.
Returning from RagFest 2013 were Tom Marion and his Ragtime String Trio and pianists Ryan Wishner and John Reed-Torres. Audiences, in fact, got plenty of great solo piano all weekend long from Brad Kay, Doug Haise, Andrew Barrett, Vincent Johnson, Gary Rametta and Eric Marchese.
The festival also featured great vocal entertainment from the vaudeville duo of Evans & Rogers and from ragtime singer and audience favorite Erika C. Miller. The piano-banjo duo of Bill Mitchell and Jimmy Green also provided a musical change of pace.
Many audience members lauded the event as either “the best” of the 14 RagFests held since October, 2000, or “one of the best” in recent years.
RagFest 2015, the festival’s 15th anniversary, is scheduled for October 17-18, 2015. Be sure to mark your calendars now!

2014 Photos
- 2014 RagFest Photo Page 1
- 2014 RagFest Photo Page 2