The Graceful Ghost
Contemporary Piano Rags 1960-2021
Matthew de Lacey Davidson (piano)
rec. 1993-2023
Rivermont BSW3138 [2 CDs: 148]

‘The Graceful Ghost’ was the name of an album by Matthew de Lacey Davidson that was originally released in 1994 by Mastersound and then rereleased in 2007 on Capstone. It has now been remastered and reissued with new material recorded in October 2023 along with a trio of pieces recorded in 1997, to form a capacious 2-CD set of Contemporary Rags.

These ‘new’ Rags cover a wide stylistic range, from examples strongly rooted in the works of Scott Joplin, James Scott and Joseph Lamb to more folklorically-infused and classically-influenced examples of the genre. Together, this conspectus shows the variety, vibrancy and continued importance of Ragtime as well as the quixotic virtuosity the music can contain. The Rags here range in date from Bob Darch’s Opera House Rag of 1960 to Jeff Barnhart’s Mystic Memories (2003).

The original album was recorded at the request of Max Morath, two of whose Rags are included alongside one written in his honour by pianist-composer Davidson, which shows unexpected harmonic progressions and a zestfully off-kilter approach that’s nevertheless securely in the Rag heritage (Davidson’s Foggy Bottom shows a more swing-based approach to the genre). Other luminaries of the genre abound but it would be wrong to overlook two whose music has operated on different levels of music – William Albright and William Bolcom. The former died far too young in his mid-40s but not before he had recorded a formidable amount of Scott Joplin’s music which has latterly been reissued by Nimbus. His The Sleepwalker’s Shuffle reveals the subtlety of his coloration. Bolcom, of course, is still with us and a leading composer of song, opera and orchestral music amongst many other things.

Bolcom’s Seabiscuits shows the strikingly quirky quality contemporary composers can bring to Rags. There’s nothing static or stately about this, it’s an organic and ongoing conversation that the present has with the past. The result is vitalising and full of authentic pep. The 2023 recordings are all in CD1 and this allows a comparison between de Lacey Davidson now and then, as he plays Bolcom’s The Graceful Ghost twice. His earlier 1993 recording can be found in CD2 but his recent recording, during which he plays all three of Bolcom’s Ghost Rags, illustrates a deepening of spirit. Though the tempo is pretty much unchanged, he is freer now, more overtly expressive and in his slightly less metrical approach draws out the lyricism of the music through subtle rubati at no structural cost. Bolcom’s Ghost Rags show the sophistication of the ‘new’ Rag, as well as their wittily wrong-footing trajectory. You need a stylist with real technique to project them and de Lacey Davidson is certainly the man for the job.

Peter Lundberg offers an individual slant too and his rag can profitably be contrasted with that of Darch’s which is much more in the direct tradition. Tom Shea composed a Boogie-Rag called Brun Campbell Express – Brun Campbell being Joplin’s alleged only white pupil. Robin Frost’s Alligator Gravy is one of the highlights of the new recordings, a Jazz-saturated Rag with Boogie elements and something, I’m sure, that would have delighted Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith or Fats Waller.

The older recordings cover a wide stylistic ground, too, from the slow-to mid-tempo romance and warm textures of Glenn Jenks’ Desdemona – a narrative character study? – to the longest of the pieces, Hal Isbitz’s Opalescence, an extended slow drag. Galen Wilkes’ contributes a spicy The Oyster Shimmy full of elan. Davidson’s Three Elusive Rags reveal his own independent approach to Rags. Pad Thai and Sala is harmonically and textually denser than one would normally find and is, as it were, a Mahlerian Rag. There’s nothing overtly elegiac about his Elegiac Rag – at least not conventionally, or orthodoxly – though it is, indeed, rooted in elegy. The title of the Transylvanian Tickler hints at its Bartókian nature. Gary Smart ends the twofer in fine style with his The Bell Rag, a darting, witty and increasingly virtuosic crowd-pleaser.

The booklet contains an introduction written by composer Galen Wilkes, some reflections from Jeff Barnhart – he’s too modest about his own considerable qualities as a pianist – and detailed notes about the programme from Matthew de Lacey Davidson himself, the Toronto-born pianist who was inactive musically for some time because of rheumatism but whose triumphant return is evident in his performances of the new-minted Rags.

It’s been 30 years since ‘The Graceful Ghost’ first appeared and the remastering has been accomplished with consistent skill – though one can still hear pedalling air in the 1993 recordings – and the new selections offer more vivid examples of a continuing tradition, to which, over many years, de Lacey Davidson has made a real contribution.

Jonathan Woolf 

Contents
CD 1
Robin Frost (1930-2010)
Hard Luck Lulu (1989)
Ross Petot  
Satisfaction Rag (1987)
William Bolcom (b 1938)
Seabiscuits (1971)
Three Ghost Rags:
1. The Graceful Ghost [take 2] (1970)
2. Poltergeist (1971)
3. Dream Shadows (1971)
Peter Lundberg (b.1942)
Gothenburg Rag (1966)
Bob Darch (1920-2002)
Opera House Rag (1960)
Matthew de Lacey Davidson (b 1964)
One for Max (2021)
Max Morath (1926-2023)
One for Norma (1972)
One for Amelia (1967)
Matthew de Lacey Davidson
Foggy Bottom (1995)
Galen Wilkes
Jacaranda (2020)
Tom Shea (1931-1982)
Brun Campbell Express (1966)
William Albright (1944-1998)
Sweet Sixteenths (1976)
Donald Ashwander (1929-1994)
Here and Gone (1989)
Hal Isbitz (b 1931)
Sweet Alyssum (1993)
Robin Frost
Alligator Gravy (1987)
Jeff Barnhart
Mystic Memories (2003)


CD 2
William Bolcom
The Graceful Ghost (1970)
Hal Isbitz
Chandelier Rag (1987)
Matthew de Lacey Davidson
Études Book II – Pad Thai and Sala (1993)
Études Book II – 400 Roncesvalles Avenue (1992)
Études Book II – Pleasant Point – Rag Verismo (1993)
Terry Waldo (b 1944)
Harry and Jesse’s Song (1985)
Glenn Jenks (1947-2016)
Desdemona (1989)
Trebor Jay Tichenor (1940-2014)
Ragtime in the Hollow (1973)
Hal Isbitz
Opalescence (1990)
Max Morath
The Golden Hours (1966)
Jack Rummel (b 1939)
Augusta (1990)
Galen Wilkes
The Oyster Shimmy (1992)
Whippoorwill Hollow (1985)
Matthew de Lacey Davidson
Three Elusive Rags – Mystery Rag (1989)
Three Elusive Rags – Elegiac Rag (1990)
Three Elusive Rags – Transylvanian Tickler (1990)
William Albright
The Sleepwalker’s Shuffle (1980)
Gary Smart (b 1943)
The Bell Rag (1986)

rec. 1997, Boutell Memorial Concert Hall, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois (CD1, tracks 1-3), October 2023, Doctor Piano Recital Hall, Bedford, Halifax, Nova Scotia (CD 1, tracks 4-19), March and November 1993, Smith Memorial Hall, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign