Taslimah Bey In Concert February 27 at Liberty Center

Taslimah Bey will be in concert at the Hayden Liberty Center, 111 W. 5th, on Thursday, Feb. 27 at 7 p.m.

Tickets are $12.

The event is sponsored by the Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation.

Students accompanied by an adult will be admitted free to the piano concert.

Bey was chosen to be this year's Artist In Residence by the Joplin Foundation to promote the annual ragtime festival, scheduled for May 27-30 in downtown Sedalia.

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Women's Suffrage Movement, more female artists have been invited to perform at the 2020 Joplin Festival.

Jazz history will come alive when master Ragtime pianist Taslimah Bey plays the music of Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin, and New Orleans.

Her all-star quartet features big bandleader, saxophonist Ben Pruitt, bassist Marion Hayden, and percussionist Djallo Djakate Keita.

Bey was mentored by and has performed with Charlie Gabriel, leader of the famed New Orleans Preservation Hall Jazz Band, as well as the late, great Marcus Belgrave, and many others.
Taslimah grew up in Detroit and began playing piano at age 11.

She became fascinated with African-American composers while in college and set out to find compositions to perform a complete concert by them. That was when she discovered ragtime and Scott Joplin. For more than three decades, she has been an advocate for ragtime.

In 1983, she formed Taslimah’s Ragtime Band, and still arranges ragtime and jazz pieces for solo performances and up to a seven-piece band.