Original Rags



ORIGINAL RAGS present a professional performance by Mike Denham and Steve Graham.
It features classic ragtime, popular melodies by Fats Waller and Irving Berlin, eight-to-the-bar boogie-woogie by Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons, and the jazz of Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke - all mixed with interesting and entertaining anecdotes about these figures and the colourful lives they led.

Steve Graham is a highly acclaimed musician fluent on both trumpet and mandolin, while Mike Denham is a fine solo pianist and (occasional) exponent of the Swannee whistle!

ORIGINAL RAGS have performed several series of very popular and well-attended concerts promoted by Take Art! in Somerset and ArtsReach in Dorset. They have also played a number of arts centres in the West Country. Their visits to the Bude Jazz Festival (the UK’s largest) in 2001 and 2002 and Keswick in 2003 were a great success, as was their 2004 appearance at London’s prestigious Purcell Room.