Rick Benjamin is the founder and conductor of the world-renowned Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. Benjamin has an active career as a pianist and tubist as well as an arranger.
Early Interest in Ragtime Music
Benjamin's interest in ragtime music began in the 1970s when he was eight years old and found a 1917 Victorola in his grandparents' garage. He later recalled that the music he played on the Victorola connected with him in a way that the pop music of his era did not. He said, "I knew in my bones that these performers and their composers were expressing their sheer joy in life through their music."
Benjamin's interest persisted in ragtime, the first popular music conceived and created by Americans in an era where popular songs were brought over from Germany or England.
Formation of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra
Discovery of the Music of Arthur Pryor
Benjamin went to Juilliard with intentions to make his living playing the tuba. When his jaw was wired shut after his teeth were inadvertently shattered during a tooth extraction, he found himself temporarily unable to play that instrument and instead focused on writing a research paper on Arthur Pryor, an 1890s trombonist, conductor and music director. Pryor was an influential figure in the early history of the Victrola, as he had served as first conductor for the company that produced them, Victor Talking Machine Co., and had accordingly been able to decide himself what recordings were released for the machine. Benjamin learned that an old theater in Asbury, New Jersey that was scheduled for demolition housed Pryor's personal collection of over 4,000 pieces of music and was given permission to take it. While Benjamin did not immediately understand the value of this collection, which was thought to have been destroyed, he soon realized that among the collection were many rare musical scores and manuscripts, including unknown compositions by such composers as Scott Joplin, W.C. Handy, Edward MacDowell, Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern and John Philip Sousa. In a 1997 interview with the Herald & Review, he explained the presence of these rare pieces: "Anybody who was anybody in that era would send their scores to Mr. Pryor in hopes that they would be recorded" for Victrola.
Controversy over Initial Concert at Juilliard
In 1986 Benjamin decided to form a 14-piece orchestra of fellow Juilliard students to perform the music as it had been originally arranged during the period. Benjamin made a request to Juilliard to perform a concert of turn-of-the-20th-century American composers but his request was rejected by Juilliard's dean, who felt Juilliard should focus on traditional composers. Benjamin scheduled a Mozart program on solo tuba at a concert hall, but instead led a group in performing ragtime music, leaving open the doors to draw in a wider crowd. Before a full house, Benjamin's group played selections by Irving Berlin and Victor Herbert, the W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues" and Joplin's "Peacherine Two-Step." One witness to the event, Juilliard professor Vincent Persichetti, approached Benjamin after the concert was over to encourage him to make it his "life's work" to preserve "America's original music."
The concert did not go over well with the dean, who put Benjamin on probation for it, but it had a much more positive impact on Grammy award winning Columbia Records executive Thomas Frost, who to Benjamin's surprise was given a recording of the concert and had within a matter of weeks arranged for the first album of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra to be released. Benjamin quit Juilliard without fanfare and has since devoted himself to his orchestra.
Lincoln Center Debut
Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra made their New York debut at the Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in March 1988 with a program consisting of a medley of music from the 1890s and 21 songs from the period ranging 1905 to 1920 which Benjamin had found among Pryor's papers. Allan Kozinn for the New York Times remarked particularly on the variety of the "abidingly energetic fun" performance, which included "a concert waltz, a maxixe, one-steps, two-steps, foxtrots and blues, and, of course, numerous rags, some quite picturesque."