Matt Lemmler and Steve Masakowski

Matt discovered his passion for arranging and composing at an early age. During high school at Holy Cross, music directors began giving him more responsibility to write for school bands. As a teenager, Matt studied arranging with Grammy award-winning Tony Klatka and jazz piano with Ellis Marsalis, patriarch of the Marsalis family and John Mahoney, Jazz Department Head of Loyola University.  While at Loyola, Lemmler arranged and composed for multiple ensembles, toured Eastern Europe with the Loyola Chamber Orchestra, performing his own composition Elegy for Jazz Piano and Chamber Orchestra. Later, while completing graduate work at Manhattan School of Music, Matt's arrangements, compositions, piano performance debuted at Carnegie Hall.

Steve Masakowski has long been regarded as one of the top jazz musicians born and raised in New Orleans. He has performed with Alvin “Red” Tyler, Ellis Marsalis, Danny Barker, Earl Turbinton, and James Black, as well as Bobby McFerrin, Nicholas Payton, Allen Toussaint, Dianne Reeves, and others at major festivals around the world.

The New Orleans Ragtime Festival is dedicated to the musical legacy of the Ragtime movement through performance and education.