The Monroeville Public Library presents Tom Roberts & Hot Club of Pittsburgh: Harlem Stride Piano, the Keys to the Harlem Renaissance. Online Presentation via ZOOM

In the years following the First World War, the pianists of Harlem had access to the greatest music ever created. Inspired by the lead of James Reese Europe and the Clef Club of Harlem, they refined the earlier ragtime music along with their technique through a thorough understanding of the great classical piano repertoire, thus creating an art form that paralleled the Harlem Renaissance. Their music became known as Harlem Stride Piano, and it inspired the great black band leaders of the swing era.

Duke Ellington and Count Basie both started off as stride pianists. Tom will share, directly from pristine 78 rpm recordings, the life force captured in shellac from the early 1920s through the 1940s. James P. Johnson, Willie “The Lion” Smith, and Thomas “Fats” Waller were the big three, but we will hear their colleagues and teachers as well: Charles “Luckey” Roberts, Eubie Blake, Donald Lambert, George Gershwin, and many others!

James P. Johnson - Gottleib Collection, Library of Congress

Pianist/composer/arranger/historian/writer Tom Roberts has been acclaimed as one of the world's foremost practitioners of the art of Harlem Stride Piano. He has been featured at Jazz in July at the 92nd St Y, the Professor Longhair Societyʼs Piano Night at Tipitina's New Orleans, Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops Orchestra, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the International Stride Piano Summit in Zurich, Switzerland.