Scott Joplin tribute at St Michael’s Cemetery

For the third consecutive year, St. Michael’s Cemetery in Astoria was the scene for a musical tribute to Scott Joplin, the American composer and pianist who helped lay the foundations of Jazz music.
Thanks to the efforts of Edward Horn, St. Michael’s Director of Sales and Marketing, nearly 200 people were treated to a short discussion by Edward A. Berlin, an American music authority and noted Joplin biographer, followed by music and free refreshments on Saturday, May 12.
Noted pianist Terry Waldo, himself a protégé of another music great, Eubie Blake, headed a trio which included clarinetist Orange Kellin, who played with Louis Armstrong, and Howard Alden, renowned for his Ragtime and Jazz on banjo and guitar, respectively. They performed many of Joplin’s songs.
Following the trio, a chorus and soloists from the Presbyterian Church of St. Albans performed highlights from Joplin’s opera, “Treemonisha,” which was hailed by The American Music and Art Journal after its introduction in 1911, “as the most American opera ever composed,” according to Berlin.
St. Michael’s provided free hot dogs, hamburgers and soft drinks. The Harlem Brewing Company, a Queens-based brewer founded by a descendant of a Joplin accompanist, passed out samples of its “Sugar Hill” ale to adults.
“This is the third year of perfect weather,” said Horn, adding, “and this tribute grows every year. We believe in remembrance with love and affection- there is no better way than with music.”
Joplin died penniless on April 1, 1917. He was buried in a “pauper’s grave” at St. Michael’s along with two other bodies, a few days later.
He remained largely unknown in his home country until his composition, “The Entertainer” was used to form the score of the 1973 hit movie, “The Sting.”
Joplin never lived to see his greatest work performed on stage. The manuscript was “rediscovered” more than 50 years after his death and had its world premier by the music department of Morehouse College in Atlanta Georgia in 1972.
It was not until 1974, when a Brooklyn Music Society took up the cause, that a marker bearing Joplin’s name was placed on his grave, and his last wish was fulfilled, that his hallmark “Maple Leaf Rag” be played over him. At the time, Joplin’s music was considered too undignified to be performed in “polite” society.
Two years later, in 1976, “Treemonisha” received the Pulitzer Prize.