If you're in the mood for a revival of the oldtime originals, Rick Benjamin's Paragon Ragtime Orchestra will have you humming along and even perhaps dancing in the aisles. Crowd-pleasing vintage American popular tunes will awaken your senses as the PRO fills Spaulding Auditorium with the joyful sounds of classical ragtime and plays the original musical score to accompany a screening of Charlie Chaplin's silent film "The Rink."
Creation of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra is attributed to Rick Benjamin, the group's founder and also to a stroke of luck. In an old, abandoned warehouse on the Jersey Shore were hundreds of original scores and masterpieces from the great composer, conductor, trombonist and ragtime great Arthur Pryor.
Pryor's musical library was thought to have been destroyed in the 1920's, but upon discovery was found to contain works by numerous popular composers of that era, such as W.C. Handy, Scott Joplin, and of course Pryor himself. Benjamin's fortunate discovery of this treasured time capsule lead to the formation of an ensemble with his Julliard colleagues to perform these recovered classics.
The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra was born and began an illustrious musical journey that has them regarded as the leader in vintage American popular music and the world's most active ensemble of its kind.
The musical repertoire of this group that has them touring around the world and across the country follows in the footsteps of the once popular theater orchestras -- small orchestra groups that played at hotels, restaurants, vaudeville halls and in movie palaces providing the musical score for silent films.
However, "American Heritage Magazine" says "few of them can have played with more bite and sparkle than the Paragon." Make sure you buy your tickets to Friday night's performance to catch these multi-talented musicians.
Benjamin, as being "a curious hybrid of Afro-American rhythm placed on a European structure and harmony." This exciting mix of musical styles also extends to the group's performances, as they blend together waltzes, marches, blues, opera, and popular ragtime tunes that range from symphonic harmony to musical comedy.
Currently a faculty member at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., Benjamin is working on a book about music from the Ragtime Era and has just completed a five-year project which had him reconstructing the lost orchestration of Joplin's "Treemonisha." Benjamin's work with the PRO also finds him as the curator and archivist of their 7,000-title collection of orchestral arrangements.
Not only a performer and scholar, he is also recognized as an authority on late 19th- and early 20th-century American music. He has worked as a musical consultant and conductor for motion pictures, radio, and television. Some of his group's performances have been likened to spiritual revivals and have been played in historic theaters and movie palaces such as the Ohio Theater, the Tivoli, and the Rialto, bringing the music back to its original home. Other performances include concerts in Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian Institution, at the Brucknerhaus in Austria, and in New York.
The Philadelphia Inquirer honors the PRO by giving them "four stars...the music is incomparably sweet and stirring. And Rick Benjamin, who founded and conducts the PRO, is a musician of wit and sensibility." Truly a diamond in the rough, the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra lives up to their name and so much more. Their performance is one not to be missed, and will undoubtedly capture everyone's musical delights.
