Front: Ragtime pianists Vincent Johnson, Doug Haise, Gary Rametta, Ryan Wishner, Eric Marchese and Bill Mitchell. Back row and seated in the RagFest Model T: Ragtime pianists Bob Pinsker, Andrew Barrett, Eugene Shin and Will Bennett.

This year’s RagFest continued the same format as RagFest 2012, with a full day of music at Steamers Jazz Club & Café followed by a second full day at Muckenthaler Cultural Center. Attendance on the second day was down compared with our previous festival, but that didn’t detract from the entertainment value of this wonderful weekend of ragtime.

Making their RagFest debuts were the all-new act Tom Marion and His Ragtime String Trio; The California Feetwarmers, playing and singing the pop music of the teens and ’20s; special guest vocalist Meredith Axelrod, who also sat in with Tom Marion’s new group; and 16-year-old Ryan Wishner, who played informally at RF12. The festival also informally featured Will Bennett, a 21-year-old pianist from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Gary Rametta and John Reed-Torres, two solo pianists who made their first festival appearances at RagFest 2012, were also each back again.

Returning from previous RagFests were some of the most popular acts from past festivals, starting with “Perfessor” Bill Edwards, a headliner from the 2007 and 2008 festivals. The Heliotrope Ragtime Orchestra, and Brad Kay and Those Syncopating Songbirds, were featured acts at the Muckenthaler’s outdoor amphitheater, as were Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys, a favorite of longstanding at The Muck. Andrew Barrett delivered much solo piano and accompanied Meredith Axelrod at Steamers and vaudeville duo Evans & Rogers at Muckenthaler Center. Solo pianists Bob Pinsker, Vincent Johnson, Eric Marchese and Shirley Case, RagFest veterans all, were featured throughout the weekend, as was vocalist and festival favorite Erika C. Miller, and the duo of Bill Mitchell on piano and Jimmy Green on banjo.

Review by Fred Hoeptner
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