Ragtime piano master plays to benefit the World Kite Museum

Published 5:01 am Thursday, November 2, 2006

LONG BEACH, Wash. – Spirits will be soaring as high as kites at the World Kite Museum Saturday, Nov. 4, as renowned ragtime boogie-woogie pianist Bob Milne performs a benefit concert at 6:30 p.m.

A free spirit, Milne has followed his bliss ever since he was a student at the esteemed Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., in the late 1960s. Classically trained as French horn virtuoso, he performed with orchestras such as the Rochester Philharmonic and the Baltimore Symphony.

But it was at the local saloon that he found his true calling. When performances were over, symphony musicians would relax and “ham it up” at the local watering hole. Adept at the piano too, the convivial Milne soon found himself the center of appreciative crowds who listened or sang along with him. It was so much fun that he kept at it, and soon discovered that not only did people love what he was doing, they were paying him for it.

He was soon playing piano full-time in Detroit, drawing crowds to just about every kind of bar, saloon and barrelhouse imaginable. Over the decades, he developed his own highly energetic playing style, much akin to the type of off-beat, “ragged” time of American music of the late 1800s and early 1900s. His repertoire expanded to include Scott Joplin rags and John William “Blind” Boone pieces. His explorations into and enthusiasm for boogie-woogie, Dixieland and stride piano styles grafted harmoniously onto his familiarity with and pleasure in the classical music styles of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven.

This has led to a successful career as a concert pianist, entertaining audiences in concert halls, opera houses and arena stages from coast to coast. He engages his audience with his enthusiasm, his ease of playing and the warmth and humor that accompany his storytelling. His rich artistic life has run the full gamut of American society, from boisterous singalongs in taverns to performing three concerts for Pres. George Bush Sr.

Milne is a multifaceted artist. He is the author of three books, with two others in the works. He has composed and published more than 40 piano rags, a ragtime waltz with variations, a trumpet concerto, a flute suite and a violin suite. He has also composed several classical art songs to the poetry of Robert Frost and Michigan poet Stillwell Ellwell. He composed the music to the musical “Orvie” as well as “Concerto in Rag for Piano and Orchestra.”

His solo performance of rags, blues, boogies and folk/traditional music are now recorded on 11 CDs. Recognized nationally, interviews with Milne and his DVD, “Pool Halls and Parlor Pianos,” have been recorded by the Library of Congress and are now in its American Folk Life division, “I Hear America Singing.”

The World Kite Museum, located at 303 Sid Snyder Drive in Long Beach, Wash., brings this slice of Americana to the lower Columbia area. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Tickets for the benefit are $25 and may be obtained in advance at the Kite Museum, the Long Beach Peninsula Visitor’s Bureau, financial institutions on the peninsula or at the door the night of the performance. For information, call the museum at (360) 642-4020.