Ragtime is one of America’s great gifts to the musical world, but it rarely gets its due in the concert hall. Too often it’s relegated to the background—piano rolls, saloon caricatures, or the occasional novelty encore. But violinist and Prairie Classical’s Artistic Director, Destiny Mermagen, brings ragtime into full focus with Ragtime, the final concert of Prairie Classical’s season at 6 PM May 31 at Southminster Presbyterian Church.

The program is built around a simple but quietly radical idea: ragtime played by a string orchestra, performed by a mix of professionals and students in Prairie Classical’s Side‑by‑Side ensemble. It’s a format that has become a hallmark of Mermagen’s work: mentorship, community building, and artistic adventure.

“I always aim to give students an experience they might not otherwise get,” Mermagen said. “Ragtime is very different for them. The rhythms are complex, and it’s not their usual fare in school.” She added that even the professionals were stepping into new territory: “String players never get to play ragtime.”

That sense of discovery animates the entire evening. Ragtime, after all, is not just syncopated cheer. Scott Joplin himself insisted that his music be played with dignity and a kind of classical poise. And in the hands of a string orchestra, that elegance becomes unmistakable. “The music we’re playing really embodies that,” Mermagen said. “Played by string players, it brings a level of elegance.”

The heart of the program is a generous set of Joplin rags, arranged by Mermagen herself to suit the colors and contours of a string orchestra. “It was quite the challenge to find ragtime specifically for strings,” she said. “I ended up arranging quite a bit of it myself so I could keep it to strings.”

The rags by Joplin include The Entertainer, Peacherine Rag, Original Rags and Scott Joplin’s New Rag.

Joplin (1867–1917), the son of a formerly enslaved father and a freeborn mother, became known as the “King of Ragtime” and one of the most influential American composers of the early 20th century. Raised in Texas, he absorbed both African American musical traditions and European classical training, eventually developing the elegant, syncopated style that defined ragtime. Works like Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer made him a national figure, and his ambition extended far beyond the popular music world—he wrote a ragtime ballet and two operas, insisting that ragtime deserved the same respect as classical music.

Joplin’s career, however, unfolded under the weight of Jim Crow segregation and systemic racial injustice. As a Black composer, he was routinely denied access to major concert halls, underpaid by publishers, and dismissed by critics who refused to take his larger works seriously. His first opera, A Guest of Honor, was lost after his belongings were seized when he could not pay for lodging—an example of the economic disparity imposed on Black artists of his era. Even in cities like St. Louis, where he lived and worked, Black neighborhoods faced harsh living conditions shaped by discriminatory policies.

In his final years, Joplin moved to New York City, hoping the city’s artistic energy would give his larger ambitions a real chance. He devoted himself almost entirely to his second opera, Treemonisha, a work he believed would finally prove ragtime’s place in American classical music. But New York offered little support to a Black composer working outside commercial entertainment. Publishers rejected the opera, performances were limited to small, self‑funded readings, and Joplin’s health and finances deteriorated under the strain. He died in 1917 in a New York hospital, largely unrecognized by the musical establishment he longed to join.

Despite these obstacles, Joplin created a body of work that transformed American music. His posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1976 acknowledged what his own time often refused to see: that he was a composer of extraordinary vision, bridging classical form and African American innovation with lasting brilliance.

The Entertainer original sheet music. (1902)

Another work on the program is Ragtime Sentimental by James Scott, one of the “Big Three” composers of classic ragtime, alongside Joplin and Joseph Lamb. Born in Neosho, Missouri, to parents who had been enslaved before the Civil War, Scott showed early musical talent and perfect pitch. His family moved to Carthage, Missouri, where he attended Lincoln High School and worked at the Dumars Music Company, first doing menial tasks and soon demonstrating music at the piano. The store published his first composition, A Summer Breeze, in 1903, when he was still a teenager.

In 1905, Scott traveled to St. Louis to meet his idol, Scott Joplin. Joplin recognized his talent immediately and introduced him to publisher John Stillwell Stark, who issued Scott’s breakout hit, Frog Legs Rag, in 1906. The piece became one of the best‑selling rags in Stark’s catalog, second only to Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. Scott continued publishing with Stark until 1922, producing many of the genre’s most enduring works, including Grace and Beauty, Climax Rag, Ophelia Rag, and The Ragtime Oriole.

In 1914, Scott moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he married Nora Johnson and became a central figure in the city’s vibrant Black entertainment district around 18th and Vine. He taught piano, composed, and worked as an organist, arranger, and bandleader for silent‑film theaters such as the Panama Theater, which was located at 12th and Woodland. Colleagues remembered him as quiet, thoughtful, and deeply dedicated to his craft—so much so that he earned the nickname “The Little Professor.” 

The arrival of sound films in the late 1920s devastated the livelihoods of many musicians, and Scott was no exception. He lost his theater work, his wife died without children, and his health declined. Though he continued to teach and compose, he found no publishers for his later works. Scott died in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1938 and was buried in Westlawn Cemetery. Decades later, ragtime enthusiasts raised funds to place a headstone on his previously unmarked grave, honoring a composer whose contributions had been overlooked for far too long. 

Mermagen said that each rag highlights a different section of the orchestra. “Every student is going to have a chance to play a really exposed and important part with their stand partner,” she said. “Everyone’s part is important.”

Scott Joplin

Peacherine Rag original sheet music (1901)

James Scott

To frame Joplin’s music, Mermagen pairs the rags with works by Johann Strauss II and Leroy Anderson, two composers who, in their own ways, flirted with ragtime’s rhythmic sparkle.

Strauss’s Pizzicato Polka may not be ragtime in name, but its buoyant syncopations and sly charm make it a natural companion. “It’s so funny,” Mermagen said. “It’s a polka by Strauss, yet it still has so many similar elements to some of Scott Joplin’s ragtime. It’s very intriguing to me.”

The pizzicato technique—plucking the strings rather than bowing—adds its own challenge. “Most string players spend their life bowing,” she said. “We don’t really practice pizzicato that much. It’s easy to rush and not be together. The challenge is the ensemble.”

Leroy Anderson, beloved by radio listeners and orchestras alike, has his own brand of American sparkle. Mermagen often features Anderson on her Kansas Public Radio morning show weekdays from 9 to noon on 91.5, KPR. For her concert, she’s selected two of Anderson’s most iconic miniatures: Jazz Pizzicato and Plink, Plank, Plunk.

“Some of his music is pretty tricky,” she said. “These aren’t terribly difficult, but they’re really well‑known. So if you make a mistake, everyone knows.”

Ragtime isn’t just a charming slice of Americana. In Kansas City, it’s part of the city’s musical DNA. Long before the world knew the Blue Devils, Bennie Moten or Count Basie, Kansas City was already pulsing with syncopation. Ragtime composers like Scott Joplin, James Scott and Charles Johnson lived, worked and published in Missouri, and their music flowed up and down the rail lines that fed Kansas City’s early entertainment districts. That rhythmic lift, the off‑beat snap that makes ragtime grin, became the seedbed for the looser, blues‑inflected swing that would later define Kansas City jazz.

This concert taps directly into that lineage. Destiny Mermagen and her Side‑by‑Side Orchestra bring ragtime back to its roots: not as saloon nostalgia, but as a living, breathing art form. The program’s mix of Joplin rags, Strauss polkas and Leroy Anderson’s plucked‑string showpieces reminds us how the city’s musical story began and how those early rhythms still echo through Kansas City’s cultural life today. 

Destiny Mermagen and the Side-by-Side Orchestra