Frank French, pianist-composer

Frank French was born in Oakland, 1952 and grew up in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district. A survivor of the Psychedelic 1960's, he became part of the city’s “outside” music scene in the early 1970's while completing his musical education at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and San Francisco State University. It was during this time that he became acquainted with Cuban and Porto Rican dance music as pianist with “Papo y su Preferida”, noting the immediate connection between Antillean music and piano Ragtime.

Moving to Vienna, Austria in the late 1970's he assumed the lifestyle of a Bohemian, tuning pianos by day and bolstering Vienna’s counter-cultural cabaret scene by night. Teaming up with Latin Americans living there, he formed one of the earliest Salsa bands in Central Europe, introducing the music to Austrians, Swiss and Germans, and paving the way for noted performers like Ray Baretto to make debut performances in that part of the world. During his Austrian residence he also found time to record the entire Well-Tempered Clavier of J.S. Bach, thus securing a firm footing in the music of both the Old and New Worlds.

Returning to the United States in 1983 he became a noted figure in the world of syncopated piano music, first as a performer and later as composer of such notable and widely- recorded instrumentals as Belle of Louisville and Buckdown Buck. Moving to Colorado in 1990, he founded and directed the Rocky Mountain Ragtime Festival and Institute working as a musical activist in schools, community concerts, radio and community television. In 1996 he visited Cuba with the Pianos to Havana project and subsequently concertized in Cuba and the United States raising funds to send pianos and technical support to music schools in Cuba and to improve relations between people of both nations.

Frank French espouses the Creole Tradition of the melting pot of cultures in the music of the New World, especially that of the United States, the Carribean and Brazil. As a composer, teacher, and performer he continues to emphasize progressive assimilation of musical and cultural concepts in order to create an aesthetic and societal texture in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. His teaching seminars include both introductory and hands-on sessions for all ages and all levels.

More information from the Scott Joplin Organization.

Click for information on French's one-man-show,

"Gottschalk of Louisiana"

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CONCERT REVIEW

The Sacramento Bee Monday, April 2, 2001

Frank French notes ragtime’s world ties

BY William Glackin
Bee Critic at Large

More people are learning that ragtime is not jazz. Scott Joplin, pioneering his kind of music at the turn of the 19th century, was following the classical forms of Schumann and Schubert, Beethoven and Mozart, and pinned his highest aspirations on opera. But his music still has a distinguishing and seductive lilt, in its blend of syncopation and something that sounds like the highstepping cakewalk of his race and day

Today, a native San Franciscan named Frank French, who has come home to that city after years of pursuing an international career of research and piano playing as one of Joplin's leading followers, is demonstrating rag time's other connections, not as part of the ancestry of jazz, but as a part of an international American music that includes Latin America and the tango and also New Orleans and the virtuoso piano music of its Louis Moreau Gottschalk, to say nothing of Cuba, where French spent years in the mid1990s writing and playing his own composition’s as well as those of others.

French played a superbly stimulating and enjoyable concert in the First United Methodist' Church Friday night under the sponsorship of the Sacramento Ragtime Society, part of the West, Coast Ragtime Society. It included music by Joplin, Gottschalk and others, all played with an Impressive power, clarity and sensitivity on a smaIl grand piano (the church's own) that French described afterward, in an approving tone, as adequate.

That it did indeed seem adequate to this music said a lot for the player, too, A lot of it was 'big' piano music, especially the Gottschalk pieces, but French had the power and technique required. He was also true to that other aspect of ragtime that makes it so lovable and , in this age, so rare: its gentleness and geniality.

The connections to other styles were fascinating, particularly those to the tango. Astor Piazzola, the great tango composer, usually included a major piano :role in the' music he wrote for his various ensembles.

The local ragtime society meets Sunday Afternoons from 2:30 to 5:30 P.M.. At Sudwerk Brewery and Grill across from Cal Expol l375 expo Blvd., and welcomes players and listeners without charge. it is led by Petra and Bub Sullivan at (916) 4573324 and Merv Graham at (530) 2730487,

Click for information on French's one-man-show,

"Gottschalk of Louisiana"

www.FrankFrench.name

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CONCERT REVIEW

email: frank.french@att.net