By Terry Miller & Susan Motander
The excessive heat warning here in Southern California continues through today. The temperatures have gone well over 100 all week. So how should you stay cool?
If you know someone elderly or infirm without air-conditioning, make sure the individual gets to a cooling station. The city uses the Community Center (located at 119 W. Palm Monrovia), which will be open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. all week. The Library is also open tonight through Saturday from noon to 5 p.m.
Never forget there is always the mall. Take a book and ignore the stores. Bask in the cool air … but for some real cool fun, its Ragtime.
On the last Sunday of every month, Ron Ross and a host of great musicians put together an exceptional program to share their love of the Ragtime genre.
Ragtime, a uniquely American, syncopated musical phenomenon, has been a strong presence in musical composition, entertainment, and scholarship for over a century. It emerged in its published form during the mid-1890s and quickly spread across the continent via published compositions.
By the early 1900s, ragtime flooded the music publishing industry. The popularity and demand for ragtime also boosted sale of pianos and greatly swelled the ranks of the recording industry.
Ragtime – A genre of musical composition for the piano, generally in duple meter and containing a highly syncopated treble lead over a rhythmically steady bass. A ragtime composition is usually composed three or four contrasting sections or strains, each one being 16 or 32 measures in length.
The Yamaha piano at Myrtle Tree is shared and the musicians vary in age from 18 to 80 and each has his own remarkable gift to share. The Ragtime club was a monthly fixture at Wang’s restaurant, but since they recently closed, the group has relocated to the comfortable Myrtle Tree Café.
The format is as follows: 1 to 4:30 p.m. on the last Sunday of every month. The next meeting there will take place on Sunday July 29. Parking is on-street, but most parking places are unlimited and free on Sundays. It’s a busy part of Old Town Monrovia, so please allow a few extra minutes to find a parking place. Suggested donations for non-performers are $5 for adults and $2 for children.
Drop by and tell them Monrovia Weekly sent you. If Scott Joplin were alive today he’d be there too.
Myrtle Tree Café is located at 405 S. Myrtle Ave. in Monrovia.
The Rose Leaf Ragtime Club is on the web at roseleafclub.com.
