September 17, 2018 | UHCL Staff
It’s a good thing that Andrew Greene – the founder and director of the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra – got frustrated with playing Brahms and Chopin when he was a child taking piano lessons. His piano teacher was worried he might quit, so for a change, she gave him music written by famed ragtime composer Scott Joplin. His resulting love of the genre will be evident to audiences at Peacherine’s Oct. 14 performance at 7:30 p.m. at the Bayou Theater at University of Houston-Clear Lake.
“I said, ‘Where has this been all my life?’” Greene said.
Peacherine’s musical objective is to take the audience back to circa 1910, when people would go to a vaudeville show or perhaps to the movies – which were still silent then – and listen to an ensemble playing this music, Greene explained. “Ragtime was popular before the days of radio,” he said. “Ragtime was really the first American ‘pop’ music. It’s the root of rock, bluegrass, blues and pop music. People tend to forget about this genre and go straight from classical music to the jazz era.”
Iconic American ragtime songs like “The Entertainer” and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” are still well known. “There’s nothing like playing, ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag’ with the audience singing along,” Greene said.
The orchestra, which Greene founded nine years ago, is named after a 1901 Joplin composition called “The Peacherine.” “I thought it was a catchy title,” he said. “People want to know, what’s that? It grabs people’s attention.”
He added that the 12-piece-plus-conductor orchestra consists of five stringed instruments, two woodwinds, three brass, a drummer and himself conducting. “Our singer, Bill Edwards, is one of the amazing front vocalists for the Sea Chanters, a U.S. Navy band,” Greene said. “Our performance is a fun, nostalgic trip to the past. While we’re playing, the audience is also screening three silent movies and we’re providing the live musical accompaniment, just as it would have been in the 1920s.”
The movies are “Big Business,” featuring Laurel and Hardy from 1929, “The Adventurer,” a Charlie Chaplin movie from 1917, and “One Week,” starring Buster Keaton in 1920. “We will show each film in its entirety and play the actual music written for them,” Greene said. “You’ll be literally transported to the days when the films came out. The drummer does the sound effects for the films, too. It’s really a lot of fun.”
To complete the 1920s feel of the performance, Greene said that the performers will be dressed in period clothing and playing period instruments. “We’re a direct recreation of a circa 1910 orchestra,” he said. “Some of America’s best music was written during this time, and we’re here to keep it alive.”
