The Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra brings its engaging show to the Lackland Performing Arts Center on Saturday, August 5 at 8 p.m. as the fourth installment of the Centenary Stage Company’s 2017 Summer Jamfest series.

Hailed by The Washington Post as “the premier American ragtime ensemble”, The Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra  is one of the few professional ensembles dedicated to preserving America’s first popular music, ragtime. The PRSO recreates the sounds of the concert stage, the dance halls, and the theatre in their own original scores, which accompany clips from silent films. The orchestra has been praised for its work to preserve and share in America’s rich musical history.

Andrew Greene, the conductor of PRSO, founded the group as a freshman at University of Maryland. He had a love of ragtime ever since his childhood and started playing piano at age 4, however he was studying business at U Maryland when he formed the orchestra, as collegiate music programs focus on jazz or classical, and ragtime didn’t fit the bill.  After Greene saw his first live ragtime orchestra at the age of 15, he knew that he needed to be playing ragtime. The orchestra builds their own scores for their performances, meaning they take cue sheets from the film and excerpts from that period of music and piece them together to make something authentic.  Greene says, “The score I’ll build is a score that you actually could’ve heard if you were going to see a silent film in the 1920’s. There are charts for orchestrated ragtime or things of that nature written in the same time as the original music, so we use authentic music for everything”.

 While the coupling with silent film adds a fun visual appeal for the music, this style is quintessential American music. The conductor, Greene, points out “there’s a feeling with ragtime, a kind of nostalgia that we’ve forgotten about.  All our contemporary music has our roots in ragtime, be it pop, rock, country, jazz, you name it. Our music wouldn’t sound the way it does if it wasn’t for the work people like Scott Joplin was doing so we should be celebrating where our music is coming from.”

Tickets for The Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra on Saturday, August 5 at 8pm in the Sitnik Theater of the Lackland Performing Arts Center are $27.50 for adults and $22.50 for students in advance.  Ticket prices increase $5 the day of the performance. For more information on The Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra, visit peacherineragtime.com.  The Centenary Stage Company 2017 Summer Jamfest is made possible through the generous support of The House of the Good Shepherd.

Centenary Stage Company closes the 2017 Summer Jamfest on Saturday, August 12 at 8pm with Dr.K’s Motown Revue. For more information or to purchase tickets visit centenarystageco.org or call the CSC box office at (908) 979 – 0900.  The box office is located in the Lackland Performing Arts Center; 715 Grand Ave. Hackettstown, NJ.  Box office is open Monday through Friday from 1 – 5 pm and two hours prior to each performance.  Centenary Stage Company can also be found across social media platforms; Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.  Like and follow to receive the latest in CSC news and special offers.

The 2016-2017 season of performing arts events at the Centenary Stage Company is made possible through the generous support of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the NJ State Council on the Arts, the Shubert Foundation, the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, the Sandra Kupperman Foundation, and CSC corporate sponsors, including Premier Season Sponsor Heath Village Retirement Community, Silver Sponsors Hackettstown Medical Center, Home Instead Senior Care (Washington), The Holiday Inn in Budd Lake, and Fulton Bank of New Jersey, and Centenary Stage Company members and supporters.