STARKVILLE — On Thursday night, the Mitchell Memorial Library on the MSU campus roared with the sounds of a clarinet, piano and drum playing ragtime music, meaning the 17th annual Charles H. Templeton Sr. Ragtime and Jazz Festival is underway.
Stephen Cunetto, co-chair for the festival, said the library will not be quiet again until the festival ends tonight, and it all stems from the event’s namesake.
“Charles Templeton Sr. was a lover of music, obviously, and he amassed this collection and donated it to us,” Cunetto said. “His love in terms of the music industry was ragtime, because ragtime is the root of all American music. Everything stems from ragtime music. Jazz, blues, all of that started as ragtime.”
Templeton donated his musical collection to the Mitchell Memorial Library in the 1980s, and it became the Charles Templeton, Sr. Music Museum, which houses more than 200 musical instruments, 20,000 pieces of sheet music, and 12,000 recordings from the mid 1800s to 1900s. The festival started as an outreach program for the museum and has grown ever since.
This year, the festival includes museum tours, silent film screenings, sheet music presentations, informal performances, and concerts by Jeff Barnhart, Hal Smith, Taslimah Bey, Scott Kirby and Dave Bennett.
Barnhart performed at the inaugural festival in 2007, and despite living in Connecticut, he has returned every year since. Now, he is the festival’s artistic director.
“This is America’s music,” Barnhart said. “This was our first gift to the world — our music. It’s the first thing we could truly call our own. I don’t want it to go the way of classical, where it’s only played in concert halls where people are coming to be seen and not to listen.”
Barnhart said he loves making people smile while he plays. He also said, despite ragtime’s 1800s and 1900s origins, “it never gets old.”
“It’s continually changing and morphing and evolving, even within the genre,” Barnhart said. “It’s always a new adventure, every time you sit down to play. … It’s an infectious, happy music. Your toes are tapping, you’re smiling, everyone is smiling. … And I’m smiling the whole time too, unless I mess up.”
Cunetto said the festival represents a partnership between many departments of the university, and includes music, painting, photography, video and fashion. At the Gatsby Gala on Thursday night, the audience could see an example of this partnership, as MSU fashion design students displayed their work while ragtime music played.
Lydia McMillan, a fashion design student, came down the stairs of the library modeling her own fascinator design. The piece was designed to look like a sun covered with flowers.
“It took hours to hand-sew the flowers on here,” McMillan said. “But I loved it so much. I’m glad they let us show our work here tonight and be a part of the festival.”
The festival is free for all Mississippi State students, and many of the performers involved will be teaching master classes for music majors on campus throughout the week. But the festival is open to everyone. Cunetto encouraged the community to come enjoy.
“We really would love for people to come out and try it,” Cunetto said. “Some people see the name ‘ragtime and jazz’ and think ‘that’s not for me,’ but what we’ve found is that if people come out and give it a try, they keep coming back.”
For a schedule of today’s events, visit https://www.library.msstate.edu/ragtime-festival.
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