The New England Ragtime Ensemble (originally

The New England Conservatory The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The conservatory is located on H ...

Ragtime Ensemble) was a

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

chamber orchestra dedicated to the music of

Scott Joplin Scott Joplin ( 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an American composer and pianist. Because of the fame achieved for his ragtime compositions, he was dubbed the "King of Ragtime." During his career, he wrote over 40 original ragtime pieces, one ra ...

and other

ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...

composers.

History

Conservatory president Gunther Schuller created the 12-member student ensemble in 1972 for a festival of romantic American music, at which the group performed some of Schuller's own editions of orchestrated versions of Joplin's piano rags. These period arrangements from the collection "Standard High-Class Rags", commonly known in early accounts as the Red Backed Book (later shortened to

The Red Back Book ''Scott Joplin: The Red Back Book'' is an album by the New England Ragtime Ensemble conducted by Gunther Schuller featuring the music of Scott Joplin arranged by E.J. Stark and D.S. De Lisle. The "Red Back Book" of the album title is taken from ...

), had been preserved by New Orleans musician Bill Russell and forwarded to Schuller by pianist and music historian Vera Brodsky Lawrence. In 1973 the group's performance at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

led to a recording for Angel Records. Orchestrations for later repertoire included

oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. A ...

bassoon The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuo ...

French horn The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most ...

and

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

and

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

, a routine period practice. Cover page of the flute part to

"The Red Back Book" earned a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance of 1973. It spent 54 weeks on ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

s Top 100 Albums List; 84 weeks on the Top Classical Albums List, including 6 separate appearances at #1; and 12 weeks on the Top Jazz Album List. It was the magazine's Top Classical Album of 1974. The ensemble's second recording, "More Scott Joplin Rags", spent 26 weeks on the Top Classical list, earning a #7 ranking for 5 weeks. Beginning in 1973 the ensemble began a tour of major American and Canadian venues, including sold-out performances at

Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts (originally known as the Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts and simply known as Wolf Trap) is a performing arts center located on of national park land in unincorporated Fairfax Count ...

, where they would play seven more times;

Tanglewood Tanglewood is a music venue in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. Tanglewood is also home to three music schools: the T ...

; the

Blossom Music Center Blossom Music Center, locally referred to simply as Blossom, is an outdoor amphitheatre in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, United States. The venue is the summer home of The Cleveland Orchestra and site of the ensemble’s annual Blossom Festival. Blossom M ...

and the Ravinia Festival; the

Newport Music Festival Newport Classical, previously known as Newport Music Festival, is an annual chamber music-oriented music festival and year-round classical music arts organization in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in July 1969. The festival consists of dozen ...

; the Saratoga Performing Arts Center as well as headlining the inaugural Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in

Sedalia, Missouri Sedalia is a city located approximately south of the Missouri River and, as the county seat of Pettis County, Missouri, United States, it is the principal city of the Sedalia Micropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the city had ...

. Following a series of performances in The

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, in September 1974 they performed at a state dinner at the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

for President and Mrs.

Gerald Ford Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. ( ; born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He was the only president never to have been elected ...

. The group continued to concertize extensively after 1974, becoming independent of the conservatory when Schuller left the school in 1977. He expanded their repertoire, adapting existing arrangements as well as arranging and transcribing the music of James Scott, Joseph Lamb,

Louis Chauvin Louis Chauvin (March 13, 1881March 26, 1908) was an American ragtime pianist and composer. Early life and education Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Mexican Spanish-Indian father and an African-American mother, he widely was considered the finest ...

, Arthur Marshall, James Reese Europe, Jelly Roll Morton,

Zez Confrey Edward Elzear "Zez" Confrey (3 April 1895 – 22 November 1971)
- accessed August 2011 was an American composer and perfo ...

and

Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...

. Schuller later incorporated contemporary rags by William Albright, Stefan Kozinski, Kenneth Laufer, Rob Carriker, David Reffkin and one of his own compositions, Sandpoint Rag. Subsequent travel took the ensemble to 38 states and included performances at Symphony Hall, Boston; Alice Tully Hall;

Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...

; the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

(as part of the

Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...

Inaugural Series);

the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (formally known as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and commonly referred to as the Kennedy Center) is the United States National Cultural Center, located on the Potom ...

; the

Ambassador Auditorium Ambassador Auditorium is located on the historic Ambassador College campus in Pasadena, California, United States. Its architectural design has been noted to be somewhat similar to that of the Temple in ancient Israel. The auditorium's main hall h ...

;

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall is the concert hall component of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, California. The 2,743-seat hall was completed in 1980 at a cost of US$28 million to give the San Francisco ...

; the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...

; and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Ba ...

and

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

. They appeared on

WGBH-TV WGBH-TV (channel 2), branded on-air as GBH or GBH 2 since 2020, is the primary PBS member television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is the flagship property of the WGBH Educational Foundation, which also owns Boston's sec ...

and WNAC (now WHDH) in Boston;

WETA-TV WETA-TV (channel 26) is the primary PBS member television station in Washington, D.C. Owned by the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association, it is a sister station to NPR member WETA (90.9 FM). The two outlets share studios ...

Washington DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

; WTIC-TV in Hartford;

KENW (TV) KENW, virtual channel 3 ( UHF digital channel 32), is a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station licensed to Portales, New Mexico, United States. The station is owned by the Eastern New Mexico University. On cable, the station ...

, Portales, New Mexico; and performed live on

NBC Today ''Today'' (also called ''The Today Show'' or informally, ''NBC News Today'') is an American news and talk morning television show that airs weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It wa ...

(Nov. 1, 1974) and

A Prairie Home Companion ''A Prairie Home Companion'' is a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host, and the successor show was eventually renamed ''Live from He ...

(Jan. 18, 1986). During these years tours took them to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

and the former

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Their final performance on July 16, 1998, brought them back to the stage on which they had debuted, Jordan Hall at The New England Conservatory. On November 19, 2018, members of the original ensemble were joined by later players and students for the second annual Gunther Schuller Legacy Concert in Jordan Hall - a joint presentation of

New England Conservatory The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The conservatory is located on Hu ...

and the Gunther Schuller Society.

Members

The original ensemble

*Charles Lewis (trumpet) *Victor Sawa (clarinet) *Ray Cutler (trombone) *David Reskin (flute and piccolo) *Gary Ofenloch (tuba) * Jaki Byard* (piano) *Mark Belair (drums) *Juan Ramirez-Hernandez (1st violin) * Tibor Pusztai (2nd violin) *Juan Dandridge (viola) *Bruce Coppock (cello) *Michael Singer (bass) (* at the first performance only; Myron Romanul was the pianist for

and in ensuing concerts)

Other notable players

*Bo Winiker, Dennis Alves and Thomas Smith (trumpet) *Bruce Creditor, Don Byron, Diane Heffner and Eric Thomas (clarinet) *Thomas Foulds, Donald Sanders, Robert Couture and Rick Chamberlain (trombone) *Stephanie Jutt, Marianne Gedigian and Julia Scolnik (flute and piccolo) *Rob Carriker, Howard Johnson, Toby Hanks and Harvey Phillips (tuba) *Christopher O'Riley, John West, Randall Hodgkinson, Stefan Kozinski, Virginia Eskin and Christopher Oldfather (piano) *Lawrence Fried, Steve Ferrera and George Schuller (drums) *Amy Teare, Mary O'Reilly, Ann Ourada, Cyrus Stevens, Pattison Story, Susan Carrai and David Reffkin (violin) *Virginia Izzo and Leonard Matczynski (viola) *Freya Oberle Samuels, Phoebe Carrai and Shannon Snapp (cello) *Edwin Barker, Richard Sarpola and Ed Schuller (bass) *Lynn Jacquin, Barbara Knapp, Sandra Apeseche and Claudia Wann (oboe) *Judith Bedford, Marlene Mazzuca and Richard Sharp (bassoon) *George Sullivan, Larry Ragent, Pamela Paikin, William Caballero and Thomas Haunton (French horn) *Paul Meyers, Marcus Fiorello and Bob Young (guitar and banjo)

Discography

As The New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble

*Scott Joplin:

(1973) Angel Records S-36060 *More Scott Joplin Rags (1974) Golden Crest CRS-31031 *The Road from Rags to Jazz (1975) Golden Crest CRS-31042

Reissues of
The Red Back Book ''Scott Joplin: The Red Back Book'' is an album by the New England Ragtime Ensemble conducted by Gunther Schuller featuring the music of Scott Joplin arranged by E.J. Stark and D.S. De Lisle. The "Red Back Book" of the album title is taken from ...

*1979 Angel SS-45029 (45 rpm LP minus piano solos) *1985

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...

/Angel CDC-7 47193 2 (CD including previous 45 rpm material as well as the reissue of the Southland Stingers' "Elite Syncopations")

As The New England Ragtime Ensemble

*The Art of the Rag (1989) GM Recordings GM3018CD *The Art of Scott Joplin GM3030CD (reissue of More Scott Joplin Rags)

Bibliography

*Jasen, David A. and Tichenor, Trebor Jay (1978) ''Rags and Ragtime: a Musical History''. The Seabury Press; Dover Publications, Inc. . *Berlin, Edward A. (1980) ''Ragtime: a Musical and Cultural History''. University of California Press. . *Hasse, John Edward, ed. (1985) ''Ragtime: its History, Composers and Music''. Schirmer Books. Library of Congress Cat. # 84-13952. . *Berlin, Edward A. (1994). ''King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era''. Oxford University Press. . *Jason, David A. (2007) ''Ragtime: an Encyclopedia, Discography, and Sheetography''. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. . *Waldo, Terry (2009) ''This is Ragtime''. Jazz at Lincoln Center Library. .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:New England Ragtime Ensemble, The Chamber orchestras New England Conservatory Musical groups established in 1972 Musical groups disestablished in 1998 Ragtime Scott Joplin Grammy Award winners Disbanded American orchestras 1972 establishments in Massachusetts 1998 disestablishments in Massachusetts

History

Members

The original ensemble

Other notable players

Discography

As The New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble

Reissues of The Red Back Book ''Scott Joplin: The Red Back Book'' is an album by the New England Ragtime Ensemble conducted by Gunther Schuller featuring the music of Scott Joplin arranged by E.J. Stark and D.S. De Lisle. The "Red Back Book" of the album title is taken from ...

As The New England Ragtime Ensemble

Bibliography

References

Reissues of
The Red Back Book ''Scott Joplin: The Red Back Book'' is an album by the New England Ragtime Ensemble conducted by Gunther Schuller featuring the music of Scott Joplin arranged by E.J. Stark and D.S. De Lisle. The "Red Back Book" of the album title is taken from ...