New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra: Grace And Beauty

In 1967, Swedish pianist, Lars Edegran, discovered a cache of early 20th century orchestrated ragtime music on a visit to New Orleans. John Robichaux was the arranger of this mysterious sheet music. Luckily for us, Lars Edegran knew a good thing when he saw it, resulting in the formation of the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra. Shortly, the NORO was a regular musical presence in New Orleans, toured the world, and eventually in 1978 provided the background music for the Hollywood movie "Pretty Baby." Delmark Records has combined and re-issued the Orchestra’s two sessions originally recorded for the Pearl label.

Grace And Beauty features ragtime compositions published between 1900 and 1915 by some of the most famous ragtime composers: Scott Joplin, Tom Turpin, Joseph Lamb, and James Scott, among others. As arranged and played on this recording, this is music of a bygone world. This is the world of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town before World War I whirled away this age of innocence.

There is a surreal quality to this intriguing music, as Charles Ives surmised; it is calm and assured and knows exactly what it is doing and where it is going. It is also fragile music, as fragile as the eerie sound of the violinist William Russell navigating among the more robust horns. This is a band with the politest of rhythm sections. The clarinet and horns move gracefully above the bass and drums as the beautifully simple compositions unfold with their own sense of time. It is the time of our grandparents and great- grandparents and Grace And Beauty will bring you there, but only if you can let go of your worries, at least for a little while. This is odd, wonderful music.