Jewish Ragtime - Rami Bar-Niv plays the Shmateh-Rag

Rami Bar-Niv is an Israeli pianist who either lives or spends a lot of time in upstate New York. I'll have to see if I can catch a performance the next time I'm in the area. I'm a big fan of traditional jazz and this is a nice piece. I'm curious whether it's technically rag-time, though. I remember getting into a long (only partly remembered discussion) with a great trad jazz pianist (and older brother of one of my best college friends) about how Rag Time is a pretty strict genre and that a lot of pieces that sounded rag actually (technically) weren't. There were a couple of passages in Shmateh-Rag that sounded lovely but didn't sound very Rag. And I'm not just referring to the Jewish bits.

Anyway, it's a lovely piece. Check it out.


Rami Bar-Niv: Shmateh-Rag