Ragtime performances

You are listening to a computer-generated performance of: Paula Ann A Concert Rag by W. Brett Youens Opus 8 2003 A human performance by Brett will soon appear!

While at the 2003 Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival with my mother, Paula Ann Poulter Youens, the subject of her approaching 60th birthday came up. After hearing Glenn Jenks perform Joseph Northrup's The Cannonball (1905), she came to me excited with the idea that I could maybe write such a piece for her "Big 6-0".  So I got to thinking.           But right about the time I was beginning to have an idea of what I could do, she heard Jack Rummel play a certain piece of his that described the way he felt when he was "at home on a winter day with [his]family".  She was never the same after that.  She told me to forget the cannonballs.  She had found something better.           So here is the result.  A piece that expresses the way I feel about this woman who has supported me in everything I have ever done: dedicated to the Lake Superior Ragtime Society in honor of my mother, Paula Ann.

Photo from the wedding day, August 16th, 1972