James Lyle Scott

Jazz piano is the art of performing jazz on the piano, combining syncopated rhythms, blues-inflected melodies, and advanced harmony with improvisation. It grew from ragtime and early New Orleans styles into stride, swing, bebop, post-bop, and beyond, developing a vast vocabulary of voicings, comping approaches, left-hand textures, and soloing concepts. The genre spans intimate solo performances to interactive trio settings and orchestral jazz contexts, while remaining rooted in groove, storytelling, and spontaneous creation.

Ragtime is an African American–rooted piano style that flourished from the 1890s to the 1910s, characterized by lively syncopation in the right hand against a steady, march-like “oom‑pah” accompaniment in the left hand. Typically written in 2/4 or 4/4 time and notated with straight (unswung) eighth notes, classic rags unfold in multiple 16‑bar strains, often in the form AABBACCDD. The music draws on cakewalk rhythms, marching-band forms, and popular song, and it became a sensation through sheet music, piano rolls, and parlor performance. Scott Joplin, known as the “King of Ragtime,” helped codify the genre’s refined, compositional approach, calling for moderate tempos and a clear, singing melody. Beyond solo piano, ragtime was arranged for small ensembles and orchestras, found a home in vaudeville and dance halls, and laid essential groundwork for early jazz, stride piano, and much of 20th‑century American popular music.

African-American classical refers to concert music in the Western art-music tradition written or led by African-American composers and performers. It encompasses orchestral, chamber, choral, operatic, and solo repertoire that speaks in the language of classical form and notation while drawing on the rhythms, scales, timbres, and stories of the African diaspora in the United States. Typical markers include the incorporation of spirituals, blues inflections, call-and-response textures, cakewalk and ragtime rhythms, and programmatic subjects tied to Black history and experience. Stylistically it ranges from late-Romantic symphonic writing through mid‑century modernism and post‑minimalism to today’s genre-fluid concert music.