About American Piano Music

Some of the most rewarding American piano music is also some of the least heard.

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Beyond the familiar names and standard repertoire lies an extraordinary body of music—ragtime, classical, jazz, blues, modernist, minimalist, and music that resists easy categorization. Some of it was written by celebrated composers. Some comes from musicians whose names have nearly disappeared from view. Much of it is rarely performed today.

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American Piano Music was created to help bring that music back into the conversation.

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My goal is to research, perform, record, and share piano music by American composers across generations and styles—not simply to preserve a musical past, but to make this repertoire something people can discover, hear, and play today.

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A Lifelong Fascination

My name is Corte Swearingen, and I’m a pianist based in St. Augustine, Florida. I’ve played the piano for nearly 50 years, but my fascination with American piano music began much earlier than this project.

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When I was about ten years old, I was walking down Main Street, U.S.A. at Walt Disney World when I heard a pianist playing a piece I had never encountered before. I was captivated by it. I later learned that the music was Scott Joplin’s Magnetic Rag.

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Something about that experience stayed with me. It opened the door to a musical world that seemed very different from the traditional classical repertoire I was studying at the piano—a world filled with syncopation, unusual harmonies, distinctive rhythms, memorable melodies, and unmistakably American voices.

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Decades later, after moving to St. Augustine in 2018, I began recording and sharing my performances more seriously. What began simply as an interest in performing this music gradually grew into something larger: an ongoing effort to explore the breadth of the American piano tradition and to draw attention to music I believe deserves to be heard.

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More Than the Familiar Names

American Piano Music is not intended to be a collection of only the most famous composers or the acknowledged masterpieces of the repertoire.

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Discovery is at the heart of the project.

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You will certainly encounter important and familiar figures, but you will also find composers whose music has received surprisingly little attention. Some built substantial careers but left behind piano works that are seldom performed. Others wrote only a handful of pieces. In some cases, wonderful music survives in scores that are difficult to locate and recordings that barely exist—or do not exist at all.

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I am interested in the music itself.

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If a piece has beauty, personality, imagination, historical interest, or simply something compelling to say, I believe it deserves the opportunity to be heard regardless of how famous its composer happens to be.

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That philosophy has led me into repertoire ranging from Scott Joplin, Amy Beach, Florence Price, Edward MacDowell, Aaron Copland, and William Bolcom to lesser-known figures such as Donald Ashwander, Glenn Jenks, Ulric Cole, Frances Marion Ralston, and many others.

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The result is not one narrowly defined style of “American music,” but something far more interesting: many different musical voices reflecting different places, periods, traditions, and ideas about what American piano music can be.

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Explore the Music

The composer archive is the heart of AmericanPianoMusic.com.

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Each featured composer has a dedicated page designed to make exploration easy. You can learn about the composer’s life and musical background, watch selected full video performances, explore their piano works, and—wherever possible—find information about obtaining the sheet music.

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That last part is particularly important to me.

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I don't want this project simply to tell people that forgotten or overlooked music exists. I want listeners to be able to hear it, and I want pianists who become interested in a piece to have a path toward playing it themselves.

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The archive continues to grow as I discover new composers, research additional repertoire, and record new performances.

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The American Piano Music Recordings

Recording has become another important part of the project.

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My American Piano Music album series brings together works from across the repertoire, while other recording projects explore individual composers in much greater depth. These include my recordings of the complete ragtime works of Glenn Jenks and an ongoing multi-volume project devoted to the solo piano music of Donald Ashwander.

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These recordings give me the opportunity to go beyond individual performances and create larger musical portraits—sometimes bringing together works that have rarely, if ever, been available together before.

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For me, an album is not simply a collection of tracks. It is another way of documenting this repertoire and giving listeners an opportunity to encounter composers and music they might otherwise never discover.

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American Piano Music on YouTube

The companion American Piano Music YouTube channel extends the project beyond this website.

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There you can watch full performances of individual works and explore an expanding video library of American piano repertoire. The channel has become an important part of the project because it allows this music to be heard freely by listeners around the world while also giving pianists an opportunity to see and hear unfamiliar scores brought to life.

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The website and YouTube channel are designed to work together: the site provides the background, biographies, repertoire information, and sheet-music resources, while YouTube provides direct access to the performances.

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A Growing Musical Archive

American Piano Music is ultimately a project about curiosity.

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There is still an enormous amount of American piano music waiting to be rediscovered. Scores sit in libraries and archives. Works remain unpublished or out of print. Composers once regarded highly have faded from the repertoire. And contemporary American composers continue to add new voices to the story.

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There will never be a point at which this project is truly “finished.”

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That is part of what makes it exciting.

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Whether you are a pianist looking for new repertoire, a listener who loves discovering unfamiliar music, or simply someone curious about the extraordinary variety of music created for the piano in America, I hope this site encourages you to explore beyond the familiar.

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If American Piano Music can help a forgotten piece find a new listener, lead a pianist to a score they want to learn, or introduce someone to a composer they had never encountered before, then the project is accomplishing exactly what I hoped it would.

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Thank you for exploring this music with me.

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Corte Swearingen,
Founder & Pianist, American Piano Music

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