Young Artists of America & Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras Present RAGTIME in Concert
Over 275 local student performing artists to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the production’s timeless score.
On Sunday, April 15th at 4 pm, Young Artists of America at Strathmore (YAA) and Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras (MCYO) will present RAGTIME: In Concert. The presentation will feature over 275 local student-artists from YAA (YAACompany & YAAJunior), MCYO Philharmonic, James Hubert Blake High School, and Eleanor Roosevelt High School Combined Chorus. The performance will take place at The Music Center at Strathmore (5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD 20852).
This concert will be dedicated to Joel Markowitz. Markowitz was an original YAA board member and a strong supporter of YAA since its inception. “The YAA family is honored to dedicate this performance of RAGTIME in Concert to the memory of Joel Markowitz,” YAA Co-Founder Rolando Sanz told DC Theater Arts.
“We’ve been wanting to produce Ragtime for some time, but needed to wait until the right time to do so. Since it’s arguably one of the best contemporary musicals in the canon, we wanted to wait until we had the right students to showcase as well as the collaborators in place to really be able to do justice to this epic work. We’re honored to be able to give this work the YAA treatment and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of RAGTIME with over 275 of the brightest young performers from throughout the region,” says Rolando Sanz, YAA Artistic Director.
Based on the novel of the same name by E.L. Doctorow, Ahren’s and Flaherty’s Ragtime is a compelling epic capturing the American experience at the turn of the 20th century. Tracking three diverse families in pursuit of the American dream in the volatile “melting pot” of turn-of-the-century New York, Ragtime confronts the dialectic contradictions inherent in American reality: experiences of wealth and poverty, freedom and prejudice, hope and despair.
Over the course of the show, the worlds of a wealthy white couple, a Jewish immigrant father and his motherless daughter, and an African American ragtime musician intertwine. Together, they discover the surprising interconnections of the human heart, the limitations of justice and the unsettling consequences when dreams are permanently deferred.
Featuring many of the historical figures that built and shaped turn-of-the-century America, including J.P. Morgan, Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini, Evelyn Nesbit and Henry Ford, this musical sweeps across the diversity of the American experience to create a stirring epic that captures the beats of the American experience: the marches, the cakewalks and – of course, the ragtime.
Young Artists of America will also present once-in-a-lifetime experiences in their Silent Auction starting an hour before curtain time and closing an hour after the production. Items include tickets to Hamilton at The Kennedy Center, The Color Purple at The Kennedy Center, season tickets to Washington Bach Consort, and much more. They will also be selling tickets to a new event, Cocktails & Karaoke, an Evening of Sing-Along for Friends of YAA. Details online.
Tickets for RAGTIME in Concert are on sale now and range from $18 to $68. For more information go online.
Young Artists of America at Strathmore is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization offering musical training to gifted and committed high school instrumentalists and vocalists throughout the year. Through mentorship and individualized instruction from world-renowned musicians, students train collaboratively to perform fully orchestrated, classical and musical theater concerts in state-of-the-art venues such as Strathmore.
Young Artists of America will perform Ragtime for one performance only on Sunday, April 15, 2018, at 4:00 pm at The Music Center at Strathmore – 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD. For tickets, call the box office at (301) 581-5100 or go online.
