NAMBA PERFORMING ARTS SPACE

​​It’s 1895: a new generation of Americans is coming of age and looking for trouble! In the barrooms and bordellos of St. Louis, New Orleans, Atlantic City – “loafing places”, as some disgruntled townie may have called them – something new and uniquely American is cooking up. Young piano players are melding southern country dances with lowdown blues with European classical, and the result is called: Ragtime, an infectious syncopation which will shape the sound of American music to come.

Award-winning pianist Eve Elliot is your raucous guide into this colorful world, with its infuriating injustices and thrilling triumphs. You’ll meet some of our story’s heroes – and villains – and get a glimpse into their lives and music. Expect plenty of hilarity and vaudevillian antics as we delve into questions like: Who kidnapped Fats Waller? Why did Jelly Roll Morton own so many suits? How did Scott Joplin uphold his artistic vision amid a slew of rejection? What does “funky butt” mean?

Embrace the duality of this elevated art form birthed by the underworld of vice. Surrender to the “weird and intoxicating effects” of delicious live ragtime and stride piano. Celebrate the lives of these debonair and debaucherous pioneers – from the national fame and fistfuls of hundred dollar bills, to the alcoholism and fatal venereal disease. And experience their music, which traveled from the 10-cent whorehouses to Carnegie Hall.