Rick Benjamin (conductor)

[3] When his jaw was wired shut after his teeth were inadvertently shattered during a tooth extraction, he found himself temporarily unable to play that instrument and instead focused on writing a research paper on Arthur Pryor, an 1890s trombonist, conductor and music director.

[3] Benjamin learned that an old theater in Asbury, New Jersey that was scheduled for demolition housed Pryor's personal collection of over 4,000 pieces of music and was given permission to take it.

[3][5] [6] In a 1997 interview with the Herald & Review, he explained the presence of these rare pieces: "Anybody who was anybody in that era would send their scores to Mr. Pryor in hopes that they would be recorded" for Victrola.

[9] Benjamin scheduled a Mozart program on solo tuba at a concert hall, but instead led a group in performing ragtime music, leaving open the doors to draw in a wider crowd.

"[2] One witness to the event, Juilliard professor Vincent Persichetti, approached Benjamin after the concert was over to encourage him to make it his "life's work" to preserve "America's original music.

[5] Allan Kozinn for the New York Times remarked particularly on the variety of the "abidingly energetic fun" performance, which included "a concert waltz, a maxixe, one-steps, two-steps, foxtrots and blues, and, of course, numerous rags, some quite picturesque.

[13] Benjamin has expressed his hope that his simpler orchestration will allow the material to be presented in more modest venues,[8] indicating that Joplin never intended for the "opera" to depend on a large orchestra.

[13] Describing the work as "unpretentious", he notes that the opera "is much more an amalgamation of the well-established American traditions of vaudeville, tab-show, melodrama, and minstrelsy, all held together by Joplin's marvelous music.

"[6] He told the Wake Forest University newspaper that Joplin's "real dream was to give everyday people the opportunity, perhaps their only one, to experience opera on their own terms in the music halls and neighborhood theaters.

[4] Silent movies for which they perform the score include Buster Keaton's Cops, Harold Lloyd's Never Weaken, and Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant.

[citation needed] Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra continue to perform regularly in Monmouth County, NJ venues, where both grandfather and grandson lived.