The most exciting and significant era of popular music was not the ’60s. It wasn’t the ’40s. It wasn’t even the Roaring Twenties. The real revolution took place between 1899 and 1919. In those years the world was shaken by war, ragtime, jazz, modernism, female emancipation and the invention of the entertainment business. Those years saw the greatest shake-up to the established order the world had ever seen and everybody felt it. It affected everything from the monarchies of Europe to the length of a skirt. The World Gone Mad features a fascinating and entertaining selection of the music from this turbulent period.

Part of the Jazz Repertory Company’s 10th-anniversary celebration of its association with Cadogan Hall.

6.15pm: Free Pre-concert Talk in the Caversham Room

‘Just Before Jazz’ by Professor Catherine Tackley, Head of Music at the University of Liverpool, author of The Evolution of Jazz in Britain 1880–1935 and the curator of the recent exhibition Rhythm and Reaction.

Minstrel shows, musical theatre, banjo bands and ragtime characterised the vibrant popular music culture of Britain in the early 20th century. This talk explores the music and musicians who paved the way for the introduction of jazz to Britain.