EP piano man Cavalari faces the Mississippi heat and finishes a cool 5th

After five years away from the Old Time Rag Piano Contest, David Cavalari’s still got it.

Eden Prairie’s ragtime piano aficionado traveled to the University of Mississippi in Oxford over the Memorial Day weekend and played his way to a fifth-place finish.

“Obviously, I would love to beat my best ranking of fourth place, but that’s more of a nice thing to have,” he said in an email. “Mostly, I had a wonderful feeling of ‘Yes! I’ve still got it!’”

Although he made a strong run to make it to the final round, he wasn’t pleased about how he performed there.

“I had one of those unfortunate moments where it was going really well, and then I got distracted thinking about how relieved I was that it was going well and I lost my place for a second,” he said. “(I) kept going and was able to get back on track and end strong, but oops!”

Cavalari takes pride in challenging himself with difficult pieces. “Part of the fun for me is taking the risk of pushing myself to the absolute limit of what I can do instead of picking slightly less difficult pieces that I’m sure I can nail,” he said.

He admits that strategy sometimes doesn’t pay off at the contest, where some of the best ragtime piano players from the United States and Europe compete.

“Over the long term, it’s really improved my playing,” he said. “Also, my stride piano arrangement of ‘O Fortuna’ (from Carmina Burana) went over really well and got a fantastic audience response, which in many ways is more satisfying than being the judges’ first pick.”

Stride piano is a jazz style in which the right hand plays the melody while the left hand alternates between a single note and a chord played an octave or more higher.

Cavalari’s composition “Cool Sprinkles,” a name inspired by his 4-year-old son, Felix, wasn’t a winner. “But I played it pretty well and I got a lot of very nice compliments on it,” he said.

The New Rag category, featuring competitors’ own compositions, includes traditional ragtime, stride and novelty piano. “There’s a point where it’s apples to oranges, and picking the ‘best piece’ from a set of 10 after hearing each only once is hugely subjective anyway,” he said.

Cavalari enjoyed all of the entries this year – which isn’t always the case, he said.

“The winning rag was a traditional rag by Tom Lakeland (from Great Britain) called ‘The Woodpecker Rag,’ which had a clever ending with the Woody Woodpecker call played on the piano,” he said. “In my opinion, I had the best novelty piece…. It’s all in good fun, and the main draw for me is that it’s fun to hear 10 ragtime pianists present new pieces they’ve written.”

Piano playing wasn’t the event’s only exciting moment, Cavalari said. “There was a severe weather warning in the middle of the New Rag contest, and we all had to hide in the hallway for about 15 minutes.”

While nothing happened, “I thought that was pretty unfortunate for the guy who was about to start playing. Really, anything weather-related seemed noteworthy to me. Going from Minnesota to Oxford, Mississippi, in late May was not easy. I’m not used to that kind of heat.”

Part of the contest’s fun for Cavalari is listening to other pianists. He especially enjoyed a traditional-style jazz band, the Corpse Revivers, led by one of the competitors.

“They performed one evening after the competition and it was delightful,” he said. “It’s always been a shame to me that people will listen to very new music, and they’ll listen to very old classical music, but music from 80-100 years ago gets forgotten about.”

Cavalari notes that Americans often choose country music or John Philip Sousa to celebrate the upcoming Fourth of July. “Or, bizarrely, the 1812 Overture, which is Russian and is about a war between France and Russia (though he admits it’s really fun to hear it performed with live fireworks).”

“And that’s fine, but traditional jazz is as American as it gets, and I wish we celebrated it more. Also, it’s just plain great music.”

For now, Cavalari will keep practicing the pieces he’s learned to play “lest I forget them again.” He’s also working on some ideas for next year’s contest if he can attend.

“But it depends on how exhausting it turns out to be to have two kids in the house,” he said.

He and his wife, Dacia, are expecting their second child in August.