Details from the website of the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was America’s first superstar in music. Born in New Orleans, he heard the fascinating native music of the Cajuns as a child. This entrenched itself in his musical imagination, and his music has traces of Cajun, mixed with his own prodigious brilliance. First to give America a “national sound,” Gottschalk was described by Chopin as “a talent to watch” when he heard him in Paris. Scott Joplin needs no introduction—The King of Ragtime, he created an American sound that remains as fresh today as it was in 1899, when he wrote “The Maple Leaf Rag.” We will get to know both of these daring trailblazers of sound, and their captivating, beguiling music.