Album Notes

Adam Swanson, from the small town of Shenandoah, Iowa, is rapidly becoming known as one of the world’s foremost performers and historians of ragtime and early American popular music. Adam has studied piano with Waleed Howrani of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a graduate of the Moscow State Conservatory. Although he is only nineteen years old, he has been a featured performer at ragtime and jazz festivals across the United States. Adam is the youngest three-time winner of the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest, held in Peoria, Illinois. In 2007, he appeared alongside the late John Arpin at the Bohem Ragtime and Jazz Festival in the Republic of Hungary and has also toured Switzerland. Recently, Adam has recorded albums with the legendary Johnny Maddox, pianist Frederick Hodges of the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, rock star and ragtime singer Ian Whitcomb, and even a western swing album. Adam and Johnny Maddox perform together in the Diamond Belle Saloon at the Strater Hotel in Durango, Colorado. Adam is also an avid rail-fan, collects antique sheet music, records, and piano rolls.

On this, his second solo disc for Rivermont, he performs a mix of rags, novelties, stride classics, and popular songs -- all of them in his unique, virtuosic arrangements and beautifully recorded on a nine-foot Yamaha grand. 60 minutes.