Perfect Pittsburgh Story Revolves 'round Jelly Roll

By Ruth Ann Dailey / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

What’s that line about Pittsburgh being a big small town? Or a small big city?

Whichever you pick, it’s just the size to enable people whose lives might never intersect in a megalopolis to intersect here. This easy serendipity ignites some amazing creative fires.

You can witness one such conflagration Tuesday night at the Mt. Lebanon Public Library — a unique synthesis of story, painting and Jelly Roll Morton’s jazz — but the backstory makes the event even more delightful.

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In the Archive

Imagine walking into a hotel, a restaurant, or a theater. What's that sound you hear? Music, recorded music emanating from speakers nested somewhere in the walls. 

Now it's the year 1914. Yes, the music is still there, but instead is played live by a live orchestra. Thousands of arrangements, created specifically for these places, were composed from the turn of the century through the 1920s. But, with recorded music replacing living, breathing musicians in these spaces, where did the compositions go?

The California University of Pennsylvania. 

Cal U's Special Collections

Deep within the Lewis L. Manderino Library, the Special Collections department has stacks of compositions, some still bound with the twine in which they arrived, and all still only accessible by card catalog. 

However, I have seen the promised land and have been granted admission! I've known about this collection for several years and this past week have begun to scan the remarkable finds that are housed here. This collection consists of stock orchestrations that were used for hotel and theater orchestras in the years before canned muzak! Every venue, regardless of how large or small, required live music as the entertainment because there was no recorded music that you could blast over the sound system (since it hadn't been invented yet) while you dined, drank, and relaxed. 

I have only begun to scratch the surface but have already uncovered rarities that have archivists  throughout the world excited. Stay tuned for more in coming weeks!

This can be categorized under "How I spent my summer vacation."

Bayou Maharajah performance

Last month Tom played at the only local screening of Lily Keber’s award winning documentary Bayou Maharajah, which explores the life and music of New Orleans piano legend James Carroll Booker III.

Sharing the stage was author Terrance Hayes, a 2014 MacArthur Fellow who won the National Book Award for Poetry for Lighthead (Penguin, 2010).

Check out highlights from both Roberts' and Hayes' performances on YouTube.

‘Cue the Music’ takes audience to the movies

From the Observer-Reporter:

"A century after Charlie Chaplin’s first silent movie debuted, his films are still making audiences laugh.

Among those resurrecting Chaplin’s classics is Pittsburgh composer and pianist Tom Roberts, who is composing new music for them, including a recent score written for Chaplin’s short film, “The Pawnshop.”

It is the third such score Roberts has written for a silent Chaplin film, and a special screening of it will be held May 3 as part of the Washington Symphony Orchestra’s season finale, “Cue the Music..."

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The Pawn Shop premiere

A new score for Charlie Chaplin's The Pawn Shop, written and performed by Tom Roberts, premieres tomorrow at 2 p.m. at The Hollywood Theater in Dormont. The film is one in a six-part series titled Silents!, Please at the theater. 

Rediscovering Pittsburgh's ragtime roots

On 90.5 WESA's Essential Pittsburgh, Tom discusses the city's rich ragtime history with host Paul Guggenheimer.

Listen to the interview.