The Charles H. Templeton Music Museum hosted its annual Ragtime and Jazz Festival in the Mitchell Memorial Library late last week. The festival took place between Thursday and Saturday, and featured a wide variety of events.
The fashion department showed off its new 1920s inspired fashions on Thursday’s “Gatsby Gala.” Silent films like those from Charlie Chaplin were played with piano accompaniment from artist and music coordinator Jeff Barnhart.
Festival attendee Beverly Wilson enjoyed having the opportunity to see the classic films.
“The humor and accompaniment stood the test of time,” Wilson said. “The audience was rolling with laughter.”
Friday and Saturday mornings consisted of four seminars from artists at different walks of life, including Kris Tokarski, who discussed the development of early New Orleans jazz.
“He used musical, recorded and performance examples to get his point across, and everyone went away learning quite a bit more about this topic than they knew previously,” Barnhart said.
The final discussion on Saturday was a panel discussion titled “Time’s they are a-changin.” This section keyed in on the journey of this year’s musicians, as well as the music of the aging genres they represented. There was a lot of laughter shared among the audience and artists as the talk progressed.
To kick it off, Barnhart brought up the ever-present challenge of technology and its effects on musicians. He focused on the difficulty musicians face when choosing whether to stick to what they know in hopes the world will still receive them, or choose to adapt to the change. He described YouTube as both “a blessing and a curse to all musicians.”
Barnhart said it can be beneficial because it gives the musicians the exposure to the public and gets their name out in the world, but whether a track has five views or four million, the payout is considered low by many within the music industry.
“New technology hurting music isn’t new,” said Steve Cheseborough, a blues aficionado.
He said since the introduction of movies with sound and the resulting “talking movie strike,” the music industry has constantly had to adapt.
Banjo and guitar player “Fast” Eddie Erikson said he holds on to the hope this idea of “being heard of” will invite young listeners on the web to take an interest in music like jazz and blues.
“The more young people are exposed to it, the more they’ll listen to it,” Erikson said.
The panel also discussed the aspiring future of the genre. Kris Tokarski is 29 and is essentially just beginning his career is what seems to be a faded genre, but he believes the genre will have a revival. He pointed to the encouraging resurgence of swing dancing in young culture as a reason for hope.
To close out both Friday and Saturday, there were concerts. Both concerts featured Erikson, Tokarski, Cheseborough, and both Barnhart and his wife Anne Barnhart, who perform as “Ivory&Gold.” 
For some pieces on Friday, Erikson joined the Barnharts by adding a little “steel” with his banjo as Jeff Barnhart played the keys and Anne Barnhart played a golden flute.
Friday’s concert also featured the department of music’s selected Keyone Docher Award recipient Catherine Patriquin who played the saxophone for the audience. The performance had to be done on a borrowed instrument, as Patriquin’s one-of-a-kind saxophone had just been stolen a week before the festival.
“The people who did come to the show gave such great energy, the performers, and it was one of the best shows we have ever had in the 12 years the festival has been going on,” said Jeff Barnhart.
Jeff Barnhart said the crowd for Saturday’s concert was one of the largest the event had seen, if not the largest.
“The concerts were excellent,” Wilson said. “Each year the performances get better and better. The high-points this year were the performances that made one feel that the old time blues, jazz and ragtime artists were reincarnated there on the stage.”
The work and planning for next year’s festival are already underway, and the event organizers hope to continue to see an increase in MSU student involvement as it looks for ways to revamp the interest of these classic genres.