Organist and pianist Rudy Shackelford will present a program of ragtime and jazz music by Scott Joplin and George Gershwin at 4 p.m. Sunday at Bethany United Methodist Church, 1860 Hayes Road, Gloucester Point.
Sponsored by the George Nelson Memorial Concert Series, admission is free, with an offering taken to benefit the Gloucester-Mathews Humane Society.
Given on Joplin’s birthday, this concert features “Maple Leaf Rag,” as well as “The Entertainer,” made famous in the 1975 movie “The Sting.” Shackelford has arranged it for an organ/piano duet, as he has with “Bethena,” a synthesis of waltz and ragtime rhythms. There will be other Joplin favorites, as well.”
The transition from ragtime to jazz will be heard in Zez Confrey’s “Kitten on the Keys,” recomposed by Shackelford as a mashup of American popular and Italian baroque styles, with quotations from “The Cat’s Fugue” by Scarlatti. Confre...