Rose Leaf Ragtime Club Meets Feb. 26 at Aztec

The Rose Leaf Ragtime Club, now in its 17th year of operation, which meets on the last Sunday of every month, will next gather on Sunday February 26, 2012 at the Aztec Hotel’s Mayan Restaurant from 1:00 to 4:00 PM. Special guest performer will be ragtime and stride pianist Bob Pinsker. Bob was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied the violin with several members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as a child and has been playing the violin in various orchestras for more than 40 years. He taught himself to play the piano in his early teens and soon developed a lifetime interest in the popular piano styles of the first half of the 20th century. He has studied old sheet music and piano rolls since the early 70s. In “real life”, Bob is a plasma physicist working at a laboratory in San Diego, California, but whenever he can he carries out musicological research, performs with the Heliotrope Ragtime Orchesta, of which he is the co-founder and co-leader, rehearses with orchestras and bands (Red Pepper Jazz Band and the San Diego Six, among others), and appears as a solo pianist at such venues as Old Town Music Hall (where he appeared in two concerts in 2002 and one each in 2003-2009), El Segundo, CA, the Orange County RagFest (2001-2010), West Coast Ragtime Festival, Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival, San Diego Thanksgiving Dixieland Festival, and The Roseleaf Club in Pasadena and Monrovia. He especially would like to thank the Roseleaf Club for giving him his start as a solo act, back in 1999!

The Aztec Hotel, is a local historic building, built in 1925 located at 311 W. Foothill Boulevard in Monrovia, 3½ blocks west of Myrtle. Plenty of free parking at the west side of the hotel. Suggested donation — $2.00 (performers are not asked to donate). Ragtime and related types of music, classic and contemporary, played on one or two upright pianos, as well as on other instruments. Attendees are encouraged to support the hotel (which does not charge the club) by partaking of the reasonable all-you-can-eat buffet ($12.25 -beverage not included) or ordering a drink from the bar. Performers, listeners and dancers (there’s a small dance floor) are always welcome.

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