Featuring the world premiere recording of the rediscovered overture to GEORGE GERSHWIN’S first Broadway show - La-La-Lucille!

From the album's curator and conductor, Rick Benjamin - 

"It recently dawned on me that the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra and I have now been performing and preserving the music of the Ragtime Era for longer than the duration of the actual era itself. Yet clearly the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America inspired such a vast reservoir of beautiful, important music that our work, happily, is nowhere near done. Thus continuing onward, we are proud to present this, PRO’s nineteenth album. In planning, I did not have a particular theme or composer in mind, as has been the case with all of our recordings since 2003. However, when musing about that with our producer, Judith Sherman, she said, “Well actually your theme is FUN.” And so it is.

More precisely, what we have here is a collection of some of our favorite pieces from the last twenty years of concerts. However, as there are several hundred of these and album space for only about twenty-five, I suppose Deuces Wild could be considered the first installment in a new “PRO Favorites” series. Many of these are dance related – rags, two-steps, blues, trots, one-steps, and a pair of waltzes. Others are concert pieces – novelties and a “Morceau Characteristic.” We also have very choice assortment of period theater music, ranging from the familiar to the recently discovered. The vital connection between all of it is of course, syncopation.”

Produced by Judith Sherman,
2022 and 2023 Grammy Award winning “Producer of the Year, Classical”