2:14 p.m., July 13, 2009----The University of Delaware Community Music School will present a Ragtime concert at 8 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 1, in Puglisi Orchestra Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts on Orchard Road in Newark.

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Tickets for the event are $5 -- cash or check only -- and will be available only at the door.

The concert will feature world-renowned xylophonist Bob Becker, Harvey Price, UD assistant professor of music, and members of the ninth annual Bob Becker Ragtime Xylophone Institute being held this year from July 27-Aug. 1 at the University. Participants in the institute travel from all over the world to work on the art of Ragtime Xylophone interpretation and improvisation.

Becker is considered to be one of the world's premier virtuoso performers on the xylophone and marimba. He is also a founding member of the percussion ensemble Nexus.

Becker's performing experience spans nearly all of the musical disciplines where percussion is found. He has been percussionist for the Marlboro Music Festival and timpanist with the Marlboro Festival Orchestra under Pablo Casals.

For several years he was percussionist with the Paul Winter Consort, and he has performed and recorded with Gil Evans, Steve Gadd, Paul Horn and Chuck Mangione. He has also performed and recorded with such diverse groups as the Ensemble Intercontemporaine under Pierre Boulez, the Ensemble Modern of Germany, the Schoenberg Ensemble of Amsterdam and the Boston Chamber Players.

He has appeared as tabla soloist in India and has accompanied many of the major artists of Hindustani music. He is also a founding member of the Flaming Dono West African Dance and Drum Ensemble in Toronto.

As a member of Nexus he has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra, among many others, and has received the Toronto Arts Award and the Banff Centre for the Arts National Award.

As a regular member of the ensemble Steve Reich and Musicians, he has appeared as soloist with the Israel Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic and the London Symphony and recorded for Deutsche Grammophone, EMI and Nonesuch.

Becker's compositions and arrangements are performed regularly by percussion groups worldwide. He also has a long history of association with dance and has created music for the Joffrey Ballet in New York, among others. His solo CD album, There is a Time, was released in 1995 on the Nexus Records label, and features many of his recent compositions.

In the spring of 1997 he was selected to be composer-in-residence for the Virginia Waterfront International Festival of the Arts, which featured the United States premier of Music On The Moon by the Virginia Symphony and a concert of his chamber works by his own group, the Bob Becker Ensemble.