Rick Yramategui first performed a Joplin rag at Shakey's Pizza Parlor in Los Alamitos, California while he was in high school in the seventies. He went on to get a Bachelor of Arts degree in music education at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington where he studied piano with Margaret Sanders Ott. After college, he returned to Southern California and worked as pianist/assistant music director at Baxter Street dinner theater, accompanist for Long Beach City College and Los Alamitos High School, youth choir director at Good Shepherd Presbyterian and Downey First Presbyterian Churches, and as a private piano/voice instructor. During this time he studied piano with Joanna Hodges in Long Beach, California.
Rick later entered seminary and then the ordained ministry, for six years serving as Minister of Music at First Congregational Church of Minnesota in Minneapolis before serving churches in Iowa City, Iowa and Carmel Valley, California. He has been involved in numerous musical ensembles in Minnesota, Iowa, and California during his ministry. In addition to serving as pastor of Carmel Valley Community Chapel and teaching Road Scholars, he performs with the Carmel Piano Trio and was pianist for Monterey Peninsula College's recent revival of George Gershwin's musical, Oh, Kay!
Rick's interest in music runs the gamut from classical to jazz, popular to gospel. He is especially interested in how music can be expressive of, and a metaphor for, spirituality. He enjoys ragtime for its joyful exuberance, musical humor, and playful sweetness and believes that Scott Joplin brought a thoughtfulness to the form that rightly qualifies him as the "King of Ragtime."
Hidden Valley, P.O. Box 116, Carmel Valley, CA 93924
Phone: (831) 659-3115
e-mail: hvms@aol.com
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