The New Orleans Ragtime Festival presents Road to Ragtime: Before Ragtime — A Belle Époque Evening
Featuring Victor Campbell & Ensemble

Belle Époque Night — Before Ragtime: Victor Campbell & Ensemble

Step back into the musical world that came before ragtime.

For this special 10th Anniversary New Orleans Ragtime Festival performance, pianist Victor Campbell presents a newly created program exploring the music, rhythms, and social dances that helped shape the sound of ragtime.

Drawing from the lively musical traditions of the Belle Époque, Victor will explore the sounds of waltzes, mazurkas, schottisches, quadrilles, polkas, marches, cakewalks, and other early syncopated dance music. Rather than simply recreating a historical playlist, he is crafting a cohesive performance that traces the evolution of these musical forms and the rhythmic ideas that would eventually lead to ragtime.

The result will be a performance created especially for the festival—an opportunity to hear the musical world on the threshold of ragtime and discover the surprising connections between the dances and sounds of an earlier era and the syncopated music that followed.

Victor Campbell is a New Orleans pianist and musician whose work spans traditional and contemporary music. He was also featured as a pianist in the 2026 film Sinners.

Join us for an evening of music, history, and discovery as we explore Before Ragtime.

Tickets will be $35 at the door.