Scott Kirby "Main Street Souvenirs" In Search Of The American Heartland

scottkirby.net/

Date: Friday, September 9, 2022

Time: 7:00 p.m.

Location: Ronan Performing Arts Center

Concert Details: Welcome to Scott Kirby's "Main Street Souvenirs," a musical and cinematic celebration of Classic Americana. We will explore 150 years of music through Kirby's live piano performances of some of America's greats - including Stephen Foster, John Philip, and the ragtime of Scott Joplin. The music and narratives will be accompanied by a video featuring nostalgic archival images from America's past, as well as stunning photography, and Kirby's own spectacular watercolor paintings of the Great Plains that "touch the soul of the heartland." Baseball games and barbershops, Prairie churches, concerts in the park, and one room schoolhouses - it's all here on Main Street.

Several chapters of Main Street will be adapted to feature the presenting community, including photos and video of local people, historic places, museums and stories from the area. The artist can do this either in advance or the day of the performance, depending upon the previous arrangement. At the end, a flash drive containing all the new “local” material, including the finished slideshow and interviews, may be provided to the presenter to use for grant applications, the Chamber of Commerce, or public access television.

Performer Bio: A native of Ohio, Scott Kirby began his study of music at the age of six, and continued formal piano instruction for seventeen years. He worked under Robert Howat of Wittenberg University of Ohio, and Sylvia Zaremba at the Ohio State University. After obtaining an English degree from Ohio State University, Kirby moved to New Orleans and began his professional music career, as a street performer. In the following four years, he recorded the complete rags of Scott Joplin, and made his debut at all of the major ragtime festivals in the United States, as well as festivals in Belgium, France, Norway, New Zealand, and Hungary.
Kirby has served as Musical Director of the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, MO, and of the Rocky Mountain Ragtime and American Music Festival in Boulder, CO, as well as director of the San Juan Islands Ragtime Institute. His appearances include a segment on CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood in 1998, and at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. Kirby co-founded a record company (Viridiana Productions, L.L.C.), has made 25 recordings, and has composed over 150 original works for piano and other instruments. Admired by fellow pianists including George Winston, and hailed by Time Magazine as an “ace pianist,” CBS News’ Charles Osgood agreed that “…Critics call Scott Kirby one of the best interpreters of ragtime music on the scene today.”

Kirby’s artistic passion grew to include to visual art, and in 2005, while living in France, he completed 75 paintings and 28 piano compositions, including “The Prairie Devotionals,” The paintings (belonging to a set entitled “Visions of the Great Plains”) and the new musical works set the groundwork for his new multi-media project “Main Street Souvenirs.” Kirby now lives in Boulder, Colorado and divides his time between composing, painting, performing and teaching.