RAGTIME PIANIST TO PERFORM THURSDAY ON COURTHOUSE LAWN

A ragtime music concert will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday on the Common Pleas Courthouse lawn.

Ragtime pianist Mimi Blais, a regular performer at the Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, will perform at the gazebo. Blais will be accompanied on the washboard by Mike Schwimmer.

She will perform music by Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers, including Eubie Blake, Budd Cross, Edward "Zez" Confrey and Blais herself.

She made her ragtime debut at the 1990 Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, where Joplin scholar Edward Berlin dubbed her the "new queeen of ragtime."

Blais attended schools in Quebec and the U.S., and has toured Quebec and the Maritime Provinces as a soloist, chamber musician and accompanist.

The Bicentennial event is sponsored by J.C. Penny and the Southeast Missouri council on the Arts, with assistance provided by the Cape Girardeau County Commission and Chuck McGinty.