A hundred years ago yesterday, Scott Joplin published a piano/vocal score of his second opera, Treemonisha; he never saw the work performed in its entirety, dying of syphilis six years later. The Houston Grand Opera, working from this score, put together a version with standard orchestration in 1975, but only now with the release of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra’s new recording of the work do we get a reasonable idea of what Joplin had in mind for the piece. (FULL ARTICLE: Barrymore Laurence Scherer, The Wall Street Journal)