New England Ragtime Ensemble

New England Ragtime Ensemble

Company type	Chamber orchestra
Industry	Music performance
Founded	1972
Founder	Gunther Schuller
Defunct	1998
Headquarters	Boston , United States
Key people	Gunther Schuller (founder and conductor)
Products	Performances and recordings of ragtime music

The New England Ragtime Ensemble—initially known as the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble—was a chamber orchestra based in Boston dedicated to performing works by Scott Joplin and other prominent ragtime composers.

History

In 1972, Gunther Schuller, then president of the conservatory, established a 12-member student group to participate in a festival celebrating American romantic music. This ensemble showcased Schuller's orchestrations of Joplin’s piano rags, drawn from the collection titled "Standard High-Class Rags," widely recognized as the Red Backed Book (later published as The Red Back Book). These arrangements were safeguarded by New Orleans musician Bill Russell and were made available to Schuller through pianist and music historian Vera Brodsky Lawrence.

Their 1973 performance at the Smithsonian Institution secured them a recording deal with Angel Records. Subsequent orchestrations expanded the instrumentation to include oboe, bassoon, French horn, guitar, and banjo, aligning with historical ragtime ensemble practices.

The album "The Red Back Book" earned the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance in 1973. It remained on Billboard's Top 100 Albums List for 54 weeks, spent 84 weeks on the Top Classical Albums chart—achieving six weeks at number one—and held a position on the Top Jazz Album List for 12 weeks. Billboard named it the Top Classical Album of 1974.

Their follow-up release, "More Scott Joplin Rags," sustained a 26-week presence on the Top Classical chart, peaking at number seven for five consecutive weeks.

Beginning in 1973, the ensemble embarked on tours across prominent venues throughout the United States and Canada, including sold-out performances at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, Tanglewood, Blossom Music Center, Ravinia Festival, Newport Music Festival, and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. They also served as headliners for the inaugural Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival held in Sedalia, Missouri.

Following appearances in The Netherlands, they performed at a White House state dinner in 1974 hosted by President Gerald Ford.

After Schuller's departure from NEC in 1977, the ensemble transitioned into an independent entity. Schuller broadened their repertoire to feature compositions by James Scott, Joseph Lamb, Louis Chauvin, Arthur Marshall, James Reese Europe, Jelly Roll Morton, and Zez Confrey, as well as pieces by classical composer Claude Debussy. Contemporary ragtime composers such as William Albright, Stefan Kozinski, Kenneth Laufer, Rob Carriker, David Reffkin, alongside Schuller himself, also contributed new works.

The group performed across 38 states at distinguished venues including Symphony Hall, Boston, Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, the National Academy of Sciences during the Jimmy Carter Inaugural Series, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and major academic institutions such as Stanford University, Temple University, and UCLA.

Their television appearances included broadcasts on WGBH-TV Boston; WETA-TV Washington DC; WTIC-TV Hartford; KENW Portales NM; as well as national programs like NBC Today (November 1, 1974) and A Prairie Home Companion (January 18, 1986).

Internationally, their tours extended to Canada, Italy, Norway, Portugal, and the former Soviet Union.

The ensemble's final concert took place on July 16, 1998, returning to Jordan Hall at The New England Conservatory—the site of their debut performance.

On November 19, 2018, original members reunited with later participants for the second annual Gunther Schuller Legacy Concert held at Jordan Hall. This event was a collaboration between New England Conservatory and the Gunther Schuller Society.

Members

Original ensemble

• Charles Lewis (trumpet)
• Victor Sawa (clarinet)
• Ray Cutler (trombone)
• David Reskin (flute and piccolo)
• Gary Ofenloch (tuba)
• Jaki Byard* (piano)
• Mark Belair (drums)
• Juan Ramirez-Hernandez (1st violin)
• Tibor Pusztai (2nd violin)
• Juan Dandridge (viola)
• Bruce Coppock (cello)
• Michael Singer (bass)

(* performed only at initial concert; Myron Romanul was pianist for The Red Back Book recording and subsequent performances)

Other notable players

• Bo Winiker, Dennis Alves, Thomas Smith (trumpet)
• Bruce Creditor, Don Byron, Diane Heffner, Eric Thomas (clarinet)
• Thomas Foulds, Donald Sanders, Robert Couture, Rick Chamberlain (trombone)
• Stephanie Jutt, Marianne Gedigian, Julia Scolnik (flute/piccolo)
• Rob Carriker, Howard Johnson, Toby Hanks, Harvey Phillips (tuba)
• Christopher O'Riley, John West, Randall Hodgkinson, Stefan Kozinski, Virginia Eskin, Christopher Oldfather (piano)
• Lawrence Fried, Steve Ferrera, George Schuller (drums)
• Amy Teare et al. (violin); Virginia Izzo et al. (viola); Freya Oberle Samuels et al. (cello); Edwin Barker et al. (bass)
• Lynn Jacquin et al. (oboe); Judith Bedford et al. (bassoon); George Sullivan et al. (French horn); Paul Meyers et al. (guitar/banjo)

Discography

As The New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble

• Scott Joplin: The Red Back Book (1973) Angel Records S-36060
• More Scott Joplin Rags (1974) Golden Crest CRS-31031
• The Road from Rags to Jazz (1975) Golden Crest CRS-31042

Reissues of The Red Back Book

• 1979 Angel SS-45029 (45 rpm LP excluding piano solos)
• 1985 EMI/Angel CDC-7 47193 2 (CD containing original tracks plus Southland Stingers' "Elite Syncopations")

As The New England Ragtime Ensemble

• The Art of the Rag (1989) GM Recordings GM3018CD
• The Art of Scott Joplin GM3030CD (re-release of More Scott Joplin Rags)

Bibliography

• Jasen & Tichenor (1978) Rags and Ragtime: a Musical History
• Berlin (1980) Ragtime: a Musical and Cultural History
• Hasse ed. (1985) Ragtime: its History, Composers and Music
• Berlin (1994) King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era
• Jason (2007) Ragtime: an Encyclopedia, Discography, and Sheetography
• Waldo (2009) This is Ragtime Jazz at Lincoln Center Library