Product Description "MORE CANDY" is a digital recording of American popular music of the 1880s through the 1910s as performed by today's foremost interpreters of this era - the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. The music is played from the actual original orchestrations (i.e. orchesta sheet music), using antique instruments and authentic period playing styles. The disc features 26 selections - most not available on record since the age of the Victrola. Included as well are a number of world premiers, including the original versions of George Gershwin's "Swanee" (1919) and Jelly Roll Morton's own 1915 "Jelly Roll Blues" (reputedly the first-ever jazz orchestration). "MORE CANDY" was recorded with the latest in high-definition digital technology in the famous 1857 Mechanic's Hall in Worcester, MA. It is without doubt one of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra's best recordings. From the Artist In the several years since our previous recording, the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra and I have been busy touring across more than forty states and a couple of foreign countries. In the course of these many performances, what continues to amaze me is how much power - more than a century after it emerged - this music still has to captivate audiences. And I'm talking about real impact when even high school and college students come up to say that they found "Red Onion Rag" or "Jelly Roll Blues" for example, to be "really cool." But why is this old music attractive to people of all ages today? An obvious answer is that it sounds fresh and inviting to our rock and rap assailed ears. But going a bit deeper, these vintage rags, marches, one-steps and foxtrots still speak to us because they have an honesty and straightforwardness not always found in today's popular music. They were written primarily to communicate musical ideas, and not purely for profit. There is an inte! grity here that - perhaps only on an intuitive level - many today long for. --Rick Benjamin About the Artist Founded in 1985, THE PARAGON RAGTIME ORCHESTRA is the world’s only year-round, professional ensemble specializing in the authentic recreation of American popular music from the 1880s through the 1910s. PRO came into being as the result of Rick Benjamin's discovery of thousands of early 1900s orchestra scores of the Victor 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, the Chautauqua Festival, the Brucknerhaus (Austria), San Francisco's Stern Grove Festival, the New York 92nd Street Y, the Kimmel Center, and the American Dance Festival. In 1999, PRO's music inspired master choreographer Paul Taylor's new dance, "Oh, You Kid!," which was premiered at The Kennedy Center jointly by the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the Paragon.! In addition to its world-wide concert hall, university, and festival appearances, PRO has acquired a considerable following both here and abroad through its radio programs on the New York Times' WQXR, National Public Radio, the British Broadcasting Corp., and the Voice of America networks. Since 1989 the Walt Disney Company has relied on the Orchestra for the recorded theme music for "Main Street, U.S.A." at Disney Land, Disney World, and Euro Disney, and in 1992 PRO proudly served as Ambassador of Goodwill for the United States at the World's Fair in Seville, Spain. The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra's audio and video recordings have been widely praised, and considered instrumental in rekindling interest in the rich American theater, cinema, and dance orchestra traditions. Conductor RICK BENJAMIN has built a career upon the discovery and performance of American music from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. He is the founder and director of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, which uses his extraordinary 9,000 title collection of theatre and dance orchestra music (c.1870-1925) as the basis of its repertoire. In addition to his work with Paragon, Mr. Benjamin maintains active careers as an arranger, pianist, and musicologist. As a guest conductor he was led many symphonic ensembles, including the National Orhestra of Ireland (Dublin), New Jersey Symphony, Aalborg and Aarhus Symfoniorkesters in Denmark, the Erie Philharmonic, and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. He is an energetic researcher of music for silent films, and has unearthed the original orchestral accompaniments to many great motion pictures of the 1910s and ‘20s. Mr. Benjamin's articles on popular music appear in several publications, and lecture tours have taken him to over a hundred! colleges and universities throughout North America. Mr. Benjamin's new five year reconstruction of Scott Joplin's opera "Treemonisha" was recently premiered to great acclaim at San Francisco's Stern Grove Festival, and is he continuing work on his books "The American Theatre Orchestra" and "Encyclopedia of Arrangers & Orchestrators: 1875-1925." See more
