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The Wabash College Visiting Artist Series presents Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. The performance takes place at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 15, in Salter Concert Hall in the Fine Arts Center.
Their program, titled “The Clown Princes,” will present the music for the showing of silent films comedies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd.
The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra is the world’s only year-round, professional ensemble re-creating “America’s Original Music” – the syncopated sounds of early musical theater, silent cinema, and vintage dance. The PRO came into being as the result of Rick Benjamin’s 1985 discovery of thousands of turn-of-the-century orchestra scores once belonging to Victrola recording star Arthur Pryor. In 1988 the Orchestra made its formal debut at Alice Tully Hall – the first concert ever presented at Lincoln Center by such an ensemble.
Since then PRO has appeared at hundreds of leading arts venues, including the Ravinia Festival, the Smithsonian Institution, Chautauqua, the Brucknerhaus (Austria), the New York 92nd Street Y, and the American Dance Festival. In June, 2003 the PRO presented the premier of Benjamin’s new reconstruction of Scott Joplin’s opera, Treemonisha, at San Francisco’s Stern Grove Festival.
Since 1989 the Walt Disney Company has relied on the orchestra’s recordings for the outdoor theme music heard at Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland, Disney World, and Disneyland Paris. They also have been heard on the soundtracks of several motion pictures and television programs.
Tickets are free, but are required for Visiting Artist Series events. Reserve your tickets online at www.wabash.edu/boxoffice. If not sold out, tickets will also be available at the box office window. The venue is wheelchair accessible.
This activity made possible, in part, with support from the Tippecanoe Arts Federation, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
For more information on the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra visit: https://paragonragtime.com