Scott Kirby

After a year's absence due to scheduling conflicts, Scott Kirby returns in his role as the strolling pianist at his year's festival. The New Orleans street player is a serious student of boogie-woogie, blues and ragtime.
He has been called "today's best player of Scott Joplin's music," but is also recognized for his compositions. "Kirby has recently distinguished himself as a ragtime composer with few equals in the medium's history," said David Thomas Roberts, a composer and pianist. 
A native of Ohio, Kirby began his study of music at the age of 6, and continued formal piano instruction for 17 years. He worked under Robert Howat of Wittenburg University of Ohio, and Sylvia Zaremba at the Ohio State University, Kirby moved to New Orleans and began his professional music
career. In the following four years, he recorded the complete rags of Scott Joplin, and made his debut at all of the major ragtime festivals in the United States, as well as festivals in Belgium, France, Norway and Hungary.
Subsequent recording projects covered a wide spectrum of American traditional music, including classic ragtime, Eastern ragtime, stride, blues, tango and terra verde (a contemporary cousin of ragtime consisting of a lot of Pan-American material). 
In his compositions, he is a proponent of terra verde. He is dedicated to building on the legacies of Scott Joplin, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and others by fusing elements of traditional American music into a contemporary, romantic, syncopated piano style. 
Kirby now divides his time between performance and composition, and is available for concert appearances, workshops, residencies and festivals.