Virginia Eskin trio playing Celtic, ragtime Saturday at historic Jaffrey Meetinghouse

A rousing whirlwind tour of Celtic, ragtime and other American musical traditions from the 1880s to the 1930s will be presented at the historic Jaffrey Meetinghouse Saturday (Aug. 13) at 7:00 p.m.

The free concert and sing-along, by Virginia Eskin, piano, Edgar E. Edwards, violin, and John A. Nelson, keyboard, is sponsored by the Jaffrey Center Village Improvement Sociey in celebration of its centennial year and as a gift to the people of Jaffrey and the Monadnock region.

The Jaffrey Meetinghouse is on Laban Ainsworth Way, a block from the blinking light on Route 124 opposite Gilmore Pond Road. The doors will open at 6:00 p.m. and pianist Louise Curran of Jaffrey will begin playing from a repertoire of perennial favorite tunes written from 1896 to 1928.

The 90-minute musical program beginning at 7:00 will feature spirituals, songs by Stephen Foster, fiddle tunes which migrated to America from Cape Breton, waltzes from the 1900s, ragtime numbers by Scott Joplin, novelty tunes of the 1930s, and a jazz medley of George Gershwin tunes.

"We're telling the story of American popular music," said Eskin, a nationally known piano soloist and summer resident of Jaffrey who is known as the country's foremost proponent of turn-of-the-nineteenth-century piano music. Her concert appearances include the Boston Pops, orchestras across the U.S. and an annual performance at Monadnock Music. She is a lecturer for the Boston University Evergreen Series and has served as a guest on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

Pianist John Nelson of Dublin and violinist Edgar Edwards have been friends since they played together in a band as teenagers. Nelson, a talented pianist, has performed extensively throughout New England and the U.S. The author of more than 50 technical books and numerous magazine articles, Nelson has taught music at both college and high school levels for more than 30 years.

Edwards, a violinist with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra since 1968, is also a baritone who has appeared with the Ocean State Opera Company in numerous productions of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. He appeared as a violinist in Steven Spielberg's films Amistad and Meet Joe Black and has played for many years with the Warwick Musical Theatre Orchestra.

It is not only the music that will be from the nineteenth century. The Meetinghouse's unusual square grand piano, an 1847 model by Henry Miller of Boston, is a model of a nineteenth century compact musical instrument designed for the home parlor To save space, the strings run from left to right rather than front to back. "It is a brute to tune," said Curran, noting that Eugene Roe of Piano Artisans of Fitchburg, Mass. donated the piano last year to the Jaffrey Meetinghouse and tunes it regularly. The piano for many years was owned by the Historical Society of Hancock, who donated it to Roe.

The concert will conclude with a sing-along featuring a little-known New Hampshire tune of 1906, "Come back to New Hampshire, Molly," as well as favorite oldies from the 1890s to 1918.

A reception following the Musicale will be held at the home of John P. Sanderson at 20 Blackberry Lane. It is the red house behind the Meetinghouse. It was built around 1785 as a tavern by Benjamin Cutter, who at one point suggested (unsuccessfully) that the 1775 Meetinghouse be moved because it interfered with his business.

The concert celebrates the one hundredth year of the Jaffrey Center Village Improvement Society (JCVIS), which was founded August 27, 1906 "to improve and to ornament the streets and public grounds of Jaffrey Center." Since then, the private organization, which has about 200 members from Jaffrey and throughout New England, has preserved and maintained, for the benefit of all, more than 16 acres of commons, parks, lawns and meadows in the Village. Its website is www.jcvis.org

The JCVIS owns Melville Academy, the village museum, which is free and open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays during July and August from 2 to 4, and by special request (Contact: housechair@jcvis.org.) The Academy, built in 1833, is at the corner of Thorndike Pond Road and Blackberry Lane.

Other JCVIS properties include the Horse Sheds behind the Meetinghouse, the triangular park near the Common, Centennial Park at the corner of Main Street (Rte. 124) and Bryant Road, and The Swale, the meadow north of the houses along Main Street between Thorndike Pond Road and Bryant Road.