At 5:15 pm on April 5, my partner asked, “are you going to that ragtime band tonight?” The concert had slipped my mind; I had no intention of going anywhere. My head flooded with reasons to stay home, but my better angels won, and I found myself sitting with our publisher Andy Senior and shaking hands with several local subscribers as the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra began “A Pageant of American Music” at the Rome (NY) Capitol Theatre. The house, to my surprise, was mostly full.
On the way there, Andy explained the uniqueness of the event. An acoustic, unamplified twelve-piece concert orchestra of the 1890s to 1920s playing vintage instruments in a restored theater of the type that could have hosted them in 1905. As a bonus, they were accompanied by David Peckham on the theatre’s Möller organ. The organ was installed when the theater was built in 1928 and restored in 2023 along with the rest of the building.
The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, now in its 39th year, is the world’s only year-round professional ensemble dedicated to recreating the syncopated sounds of early musical theatre, silent cinema, and vintage dance. Rick Benjamin formed the orchestra after discovering thousands of historic orchestral scores from the Victor archives while at Juilliard. He is a leading expert on silent film accompaniment, making the Capitol Theatre an especially appropriate venue. In August, they host Capitolfest, a weekend of silent films and early talkies, with the silent movies accompanied on the organ.
Hearing this music, performed in this setting, by these people, is not something you can capture on YouTube, or even on an album played at home on a good stereo. The experience requires being in the room, focusing on the stage and its surroundings with eyes, ears, and occasionally a tapping foot, feeling it rawly and cementing it into memory. A Pageant of American Music was a portal back in time.
The concert featured Scott Joplin, Sousa, Gershwin, Kern, Berlin, Mel Kaufman, George Cobb, and others. There was an excellent Stephen Foster medley, in an arrangement from 1892. David Peckahm at the organ was impressive. He made two solo performances and accompanied the band on several numbers. Orchestrations were from Rick Benjamin’s 20,000-title collection. There were recognizable “hits,” but also unique material to celebrate Rome, NY, including “Down by the Erie Canal.” They closed with “The Heart of Rome March,” which, as Benjamin commented, may not have been heard in a century. It sounded to me like a collective memory of Rome in 1900, a bustling immigrant center, full of new Americans and the new syncopated American music.
Joe Bebco is the Associate Editor of The Syncopated Times and Webmaster of SyncopatedTimes.com
