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Artist
Tom Brier
12+ albums
ragtimepianoUSAjazz
about
Tom Brier is an American ragtime pianist and composer. The hallmark of Brier's piano-playing style is an aggressive left hand that attacks the lower half of the piano keyboard in staccato, machine-gun-like octave passages. He alternates these voicings with a variety of other sounds: walking bass ("boogie"), single-note figures, and widely-spaced chords -- often both arpeggiated and unarpeggiated tenths. Born in Oakdale, California in 1971, Tom Brier was exposed to ragtime in his earliest years when his parents purchased a player piano. He was all of four years old at the time. Soon, he was picking out on the piano keyboard the ragtime tunes he'd heard off the piano rolls. His parents found him a music teacher when he was five, and very shortly, he was composing and notating his own piano pieces. By the age of 11, he had composed and written the scores to some two dozen rags. His first "serious" ragtime piece was the "Pine Cone Rag" of 1982, when Brier was 11 years old. Three years later, he began attending gatherings of the Sacramento Ragtime Society. The 14-year-old prodigy amazed everyone within earshot with his articulate renderings of the ragtime classics, and with his own highly original piano compositions. Tom Brier performed at his first West Coast Ragtime Festival in 1989. He has been a headliner every year since, astounding onlookers with his machine-like precision, sensitive interpretations of more lyrical pieces, and nearly flawless sight-reading technique. W
