Nora Hulse, ragtime pianist, accompanied on tenor banjo by her husband, Mark, will perform at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 24 at the Wesley United Methodist Church as part of the 2006-2007 Grundy County Friends of the Arts season.
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Ms. Hulse was introduced to Ragtime in Cripple Creek, CO, at an early age. Since retiring as professor of keyboard studies at Central Methodist College in Fayette, she performs at ragtime festivals around the USA, gives lecture-recitals on the women ragtime composers, appears with her husband as The Ragtime Razzmatazz Duo at Jazz/4 String Banjo Festivals, keyboards with her husband in their Dixieland band, The Roundhouse Rascals, performs with the Turpin Tyme Ragsters, tours the universe ferreting out unrevealed ragtime gems by women composers as well as researching their lives, makes recordings and plays ragtime regularly on a unique local live TV show, Pepper and Friends, on KOMU-TV in Columbia. She is a regular performer at the International Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia.
Other performance credits include the West Coast Ragtime Festival, Ragtime in Randall, IA, Ragtime for Tulsa Foundation, Classic Ragtime Society of Indianapolis, IN, the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site and Friends of Scott Joplin Concert, both in St. Louis. She has co-authored an annotated lexicon, “Ragtime Women Composers,” which appeared in The Rag-Time Ephemeralist, Volume One, Number Three, and in 2004 she received the prestigious Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Ragtime. She has produced six recordings and three music folios of ragtime composed by women.
Her academic background includes a Ph.D in Music Education, M.M. In Piano Performance, M.M. In Organ Performance, a B.S. In Music Education, and harpsichord studies at the University of Michigan and S.M.U. She holds the AAGO Certificate from the American Guild of Organists and is listed in the 1992-1993 Edition of American Keyboard Artists.
Mark Hulse is retired from the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he was director of a research instrumentation laboratory for 40 years. His early musical experiences included playing trombone in elementary and high school bands and also the local fire house band on Long Island, NY, which was down the street from his home. A few years later he took up the banjo, studying at the renowned Mel Bay studios in St. Louis. The late 1960s and early 1970s found him playing banjo and trombone several nights a week at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor and The Village Inn in Columbia. It was during those years that he and his wife met and have performed continually over the years as a banjo/piano duo and with Dixieland bands.
The duo will also be performing that day in the music building at Trenton High School from noon to 2:40 p.m.. This program will be for music students only.
Tickets for the evening performance will be $8 at the door. Friends of the Arts season ticketholders will be admitted free as well as NCMC students with proper identification.
Corporate co-sponsorship for this show is provided by Martha Ball Memorial Gift, Citizens Bank & Trust, Hy-Vee Food Stores, PAR Broadcasting Group, Trenton Coca-Cola Bottling Co., LLC, Trenton Republican-Times and US Bank. Additional co-sponsorship is provided by MasterVideo and generous donations from other individuals and businesses in the community. Financial assistance has also been provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.