Features and Reviews
Bob Pinsker
(Continuing our series on Rose Leaf Club members, Bob Pinsker, ragtime and stride performer and scholar among many other talents, contributed the following musical autobiography)
Bob Pinsker was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied the violin with several members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as a child and has been playing the violin in various orchestras for more than 40 years.
He taught himself to play the piano in his early teens and soon developed a lifetime interest in the popular piano styles of the first half of the 20th century. Bob has studied old sheet music and piano rolls since the early 70s. In "real life," Bob is a plasma physicist working at a laboratory in San Diego, California, but whenever he can he carries out musicological research, performs with the Heliotrope Ragtime Orchestra, of which he is the co-founder and co-leader, rehearses with orchestras and bands (Red Pepper Jazz Band and the San Diego Six, among others), and appears as a solo pianist at such venues as Old Town Music Hall (where he appeared in two concerts in 2002 and one each in 2003-2009), El Segundo, CA, the Orange County RagFest (2001-2010), West Coast Ragtime Festival, Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival, San Diego Thanksgiving Dixieland Festival, and The Rose Leaf Club in Pasadena and Monrovia.
Bob especially would like to thank the Rose Leaf Club for giving him his start as a solo act, back in 1999!
