500 million have heard his music
By Wayne Laepple
On his first visit to Lewisburg in 1992, Rick Benjamin fell in love with the town, bought a house and has been here ever since. The founder and conductor of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, Benjamin was in Lewisburg for a performance at Bucknell University’s Weis Center for the Performing Arts. Before the performance, Benjamin and his wife, Leslie Cullen, were walking around town. They saw a late Victorian house for sale on Fourth Street ... and bought it. "I'm crazy about Victorian architecture," he said simply. "We were attracted to it, and the price was right." After just a few days in their new home, the couple flew off to Spain for six months, where the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra was the house band in the America Pavilion at the 1992 World's Fair in Barcelona.
Early years
Benjamin grew up in New Jersey and went to New York City to study at the Juilliard School of Music. He performed as a pianist and tubist with several orchestras and appeared in a number of televised concerts. As an 8-year-old boy, Benjamin became fascinated by his grandparents' hand-cranked Victrola and the music that emanated from it. Then, in 1985, he stumbled across a 3,600-page collection of old-time sheet music once owned by Arthur Pryor. Pryor had been a conductor of bands for the Victor Talking Machine Co., which later became RCA Victor. Not long after that, he started the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra as a way to perform and preserve that old music. He was 20 years old.
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