Ragtime

The last line of an article on the Tony Awards was inadvertently omitted in yesterday's Arts & Society section. The final paragraph should have read:Twenty years from now, when your neighborhood dinner theater, community theater or high school stages "Ragtime," it will still be a great musical. But when -- or if -- they stage "The Lion King," it will still be a cartoon.The Sun regrets the errors.Pub Date: 6/08/98

Musical -- Anne Arundel Community College's Moonlight Troupers drama club will present Ragtime at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 18 in the Pascal Center for Performing Arts, 101 College Parkway, Arnold. The cost is $15 for adults and $12 for seniors, AACC employees and non-AACC students; and $8 for AACC students. 410-777-2457 or www.aacc.edu/performingarts.

The syncopated inflections of ragtime and jazz gave the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra's program this week an extra kick. It provided a good opportunity to trace the influences of popular idioms on Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland, two giants who helped define classical music in the 20th century. Stravinsky's Ragtime, scored for 11 instruments, suggests a cubist take on Scott Joplin. Melodic fragments are tossed around, ending up in odd places and falling on odd beats; dynamic levels are quirky.

Two Howard County productions won two Helen Hayes Awards apiece this week at an annual ceremony honoring theater in the metropolitan Washington area. Awards went to lead actor Tom McKenzie and choreographer Ilona Kessell for their work in Ragtime: The Musical at Toby's Dinner Theatre in Columbia. Director Kasi Campbell and lead actor Bruce Nelson won for their work in The Dazzle at Rep Stage, a professional company housed at Howard Community College. The theaters were nominated for a combined 16 awards, making a strong showing against about 60 professional theaters, including ones with large budgets and well-known reputations such as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Arena Stage.

This ragtime legend died 24 years ago, but thanks to a cast of raconteurs, he and his story will live on. On Wednesday, Olney Theatre Center starts celebrating the career of James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, a ragtime composer and performer. Broadway veteran Tony Parise directs and choreographs Eubie! - an adaptation of the 1978 musical revue. His intentions were to re-create the production with a modern twist for today's audiences. "It deserves to be heard by a new audience and a new generation," he said.

Two-act play The lowdown -- William Mastrosimone's play The Woolgatherer is the tale of two strange people who fall in love. The two-act play takes place entirely within an apartment, as Rose and Cliff navigate their conflicts and loneliness. The play is at the Fell's Point Corner Theatre starting tomorrow. If you go -- Performances are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, tomorrow through May 4. No show April 26. Tickets $15-$17. The Fell's Point Corner Theatre is at 251 S. Ann St. Call 410-276-7837 or go to fpct.

Today:Hickory Plains Farm's Red Star Rose, the lone added-money winner in a field of seven, is the choice to capture the Deputed Testamony Stakes for 3-year-old Maryland-breds. The 13th running of the $75,000 event will be contested over 1 1/8 miles. Trained by Hamilton Smith, Red Star Rose won the Maryland Juvenile Championship after a near miss in the Rollicking Stakes, also for state-breds. In his most recent outing, the son of Proud Truth faced open company in the Miracle Wood and finished a respectable third.

Howard E. Rollins Jr., a Baltimore-born actor whose achievements included a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for 1981's Ragtime, will be joining the lineup at the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum next week. Rollins' early credits included the soap opera All My Children and a pair of influential TV miniseries: Roots: The Next Generation (playing George Haley, the brother of Roots author Alex Haley) and King, a dramatization of the life of Martin Luther King Jr., in which he played Andrew Young.

Editor's note: The story of the musician and composer who helped shape the future of jazzDuke's name fit him rightly. He was a smooth-talkin', slick-steppin', piano-playin' kid. But his piano playing wasn't always as breezy as his stride. When Duke's mother, Daisy, and his father, J.E., enrolled him in piano lessons, Duke didn't want to go. Baseball was Duke's idea of fun. But his parents had other notions for their child.Duke had to start with the piano basics, his fingers playing the same tired tune -- one-and-two-and-one-and-two.