The Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra may be more relevant in 2021 than its name might suggest. No, that’s not necessarily a reference to the 12-piece group’s ragtime takes on (relatively) modern popular songs such as The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” or A-ha’s “Take on Me.” Both those songs feature in the group’s virtual multimedia show, the Stage and Screen Spectacular, which will be presented through the Tower Theatre at 6 p.m. Thursday, with screenings every day through Feb. 6. (Tickets cost $20; visit towertheatre.org for more information.)

Ragtime, known for the syncopated, “ragged” rhythms from which it derived its name, is widely credited as America’s first form of popular music.

It hit the height of its popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s, peaking around 1919, right in the midst of the influenza pandemic. Sound familiar?

“It’s a weird centennial marking if you will,” Peacherine director and founder Andrew Greene said recently from his home in Annapolis, Maryland. “For all the wrong reasons.”

Like every musician around the world, Greene has struggled during the pandemic. Peacherine played its last show March 10 in Louisiana, but has kept up with the live streaming world with virtual performances and a handful of online music festivals featuring a wide array of ragtime musicians performing from their homes.

“We early on decided, well, let’s try to stay relevant,” Greene said. “Especially with the music that we play, it’s, I don’t want to say an underappreciated part of American culture, but it’s something that’s so crucial to, musically, our American identity that it deserves to be heard.”

While the virtual festivals earned thousands of dollars in donations to the musicians, according to Greene, he wanted to do something more with Peacherine. In August and September, the orchestra recorded the Stage and Screen Spectacular at Salisbury University’s Holloway Hall in Maryland.

The hour-long show, which debuted in November as part of the virtual West Coast Ragtime Festival based in Sacramento, plays like a standard Peacherine show. The vaudeville-esque performance will include classic ragtime numbers from the genre’s heyday, modern songs reworked in a ragtime style, comedy numbers and a silent film accompanied by the orchestra. (Peacherine played the Tower in 2019, providing a score for the silent horror film “Nosferatu.”)

“One of the things that was making a resurgence was this movies-and-music idea (where) you’d have symphonies doing ‘Jurassic Park’ or ‘Harry Potter,’” Greene said. “And we of course take it back to the original: Here’s how they literally did it when they were figuring this stuff out, with the actual music and the live orchestra doing exactly what they would have been doing.”

Greene, 29, is recognized as a leading expert in ragtime music. He founded the orchestra when he was 18, as a freshman at the University of Maryland, College Park.

“You might say it’s slightly insane to do that when you’re that young,” Greene said. “… At the same time, I got into this music when I was 11 at a piano lesson. I was bored of Chopin and Bach and Beethoven because it was difficult and it was more rigorous to play than anything else. And so as a reward, my piano teacher gave me a copy of Scott Joplin’s ‘Maple Leaf Rag,’ which is actually a part of the program that the audience at the Tower will hear. And immediately I was blown away at the syncopation, the fun-filled melodies and how just overall fun it sounded.”

Greene’s collection now includes 15,000 orchestrations from the 1880s through the 1920s, including 500 cue sheets for silent films. Most recently, he obtained ragtime pianist Johnny Maddox’s collection of sheet music following Maddox’s death in 2018.

Many of these selections appeared on the group’s latest album, 2019’s “Jazzin’ the Blues Away.” The album also features a number of songs by women composers of the ragtime era.

“We try to make sure that every CD, we have at least several works on it that have never been recorded before, again for the reason of, it’s so good, why has the world not celebrated it?” Greene said. “A big thing that was a focus last year — but of course COVID took it over — was the centennial of the women’s right to vote. And so on our last CD, ‘Jazzin’ the Blues Away,’ I made sure that we had at least a couple of pieces by women composers in the ragtime era including May Aufderheide. … But it’s not a common thing to say, ‘Oh yeah, have you heard the latest Aufderheide work?’”

The virtual show will also shine a spotlight on Black contributions to American music. Ragtime, a predecessor of jazz, originated in Black communities with composers such as Scott Joplin and Eubie Blake.

“There is a darker side to the music where you have the minstrel aspect where performers would cork up, if you will, putting on black face, which is obviously a very sad part of that era of music,” Greene said. “But that was sort of the time where Black artists actually were able to get a national stage to get their music heard, get it recognized. People like Bert Wiliams in the early 1900s, people like Eubie Blake, who got their start in the teen and of course went on to write the first successful African-American show on Broadway, ‘Shuffle Along.’”

If You Go:

What: Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra’s Stage and Screen Spectacular

When: 6 p.m. Thursday, with screenings at the same time every day through Feb. 6

Where: Virtual show

Cost: $20

Contact: towertheatre.org or 541-317-0700