Perlman Easy Street

The music of Scott Joplin, the “King of Ragtime”, achieved a newfound popularity in the mid-1970s, nearly sixty years after the composer’s death. Its beguiling synthesis of African-American syncopations and European musical forms is eloquently captured by Itzhak Perlman and André Previn.

When Leonard Bernstein was asked by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to compose the inaugural work for the opening of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., he wrote: “The Mass is also an extremely dramatic event in itself—it even suggests a theater work.” Premiered on September 8, 1971, with additional words by Stephen Schwartz of Godspell fame, Mass is a remarkable, visionary work with a kaleidoscope of musical styles that touches on themes of political protest, existential crisis and religious faith lost and found.