The Glenn Jenks Ragtime Revue is back and better than ever!

Premiering in 2019 at the Camden Opera House, the Glenn Jenks Ragtime Revue celebrates the life and music of the late composer and pianist Glenn Jenks through music, dance and song from the ragtime and early jazz era. Glenn Jenks was a renowned pianist, composer and music historian from Camden, Maine whose music is still performed and recorded around the world today. Jenks was a founding member and respected figure of several Ragtime Festivals for over three decades and producer of the annual “Harvest Ragtime Revue” at the Camden Opera House in Camden, Maine as well as the “New Vaudeville Revival”. A respected ornithologist and celebrated botany specialist of roses, Jenks conducted several tours of local gardens in the Camden area.

This year’s Revue is Sunday, Oct. 23 at the Rockport Opera House - 6 Central St., Rockport – at 2 p.m.  It features world renowned piano duo and husband and wife team Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi performing 4-hand stride and ragtime piano. Trick and Alderighi have toured the world performing together, presenting master classes and live streaming private concerts. Stephanie Trick is regarded as one of the world’s leading stride pianists.

Recipients of the Glenn Jenks “Future in Music” Prize sponsored by the Ragtime Revue Scholarship and presented at the annual Bay Chamber “Young Stars of Maine Prize Program” will also take the stage. Seventeen-year-old 2019 prize recipient and award-winning fiddler Owen Kennedy will perform traditional Scottish selections. Kennedy has performed all over the world from the East Coast to the West Coast to the Shetland Islands and is the 2022 New England Regional Open Scottish Fiddle Champion and the 2021 Junior US National Scottish Fiddle Champion. Eighteen-year- old 2022 prize recipient and internationally award-winning Mavy Le from Gorham will also perform electric violin selections.

This year’s Ragtime Revue features the classical ragtime works of Glenn Jenks. The Halcyon String Quartet featuring Sophie and Josie Davis, violin, Nora Willauer, cello and Collin Wheatley, viola will perform Jenks’ “String Quartet in Ragtime.”

Soprano Erin Chenard from Bath and baritone David Myers, Jr. from Portland will perform selections from Scott Joplin’s historic ragtime opera “Treemonisha” along with a 30-member ragtime chorus comprising of professional singers throughout Maine from Bangor to Belfast to Portland.

Award-winning children’s book author Steven Costanza from North Haven will perform and also sign his latest book “King of Ragtime - The Story of Scott Joplin,” which recently won the Golden Kite Book Award.

Special guest, ragtime historian and scholar, author Edward Berlin will receive the Glenn Jenks Ragtime Emeritus Award and also present a pre-concert lecture about the life and times of Scott Joplin. Edward Berlin has written three books on the subject of Ragtime and its composers: King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era (1994), Reflections and Research on Ragtime (1987), and Ragtime: A Music and Cultural History (1980). He is regarded as the leading researcher on Scott Joplin. Berlin annually helps organize the Scott Joplin Memorial Concert at St. Michael's Cemetery in Queens, New York. For the 100th anniversary of Joplin's death in 2017, Berlin established a fund to place an engraved memorial bench next to Joplin's grave.

This year’s Ragtime Revue is dedicated to Glenn Jenk’s father Edwin “Ted” Hamilton Jenks who passed away in April at the age of 99 years. Glenn wrote and dedicated his 1993 work “The Old Pink Piano” to his father.

Maine composer and pianist Aaron Robinson will once again host the Revue.

General admission tickets can be purchased at the door. $30 adults / $15 students. Reservations can be made by calling 207-882-6335 or visiting the Rockport Opera House website and Ticketmaster at: https://rockportoperahouse.org/rockportoperahouse or https://rockportoperahouse.thundertix.com/orders/new?performance_id=2853507