October 26-27, 2002 Performances of "Yamekraw: A Negro Rhapsody" at Mira Costa College Theater, Oceanside, CA. Johnson's 1927 masterwork was performed by the North Coast Symphony Orchestra, with Robert I. Pinsker, piano soloist, Oct. 26, 2002 at 7:30 pm and on Oct. 27, 2002 at 2:00 pm, at the MiraCosta College Theater, One Barnard Drive, Oceanside, CA. This was the first performance of the full version of this work, written by Johnson for piano and full orchestra, in San Diego County, to the best of our knowledge. The Foundation participated in this event with a fascinating display of Johnson memorabilia to help place this important composition in its historical context. Clearly inspired by the success of his friend George Gershwin's 1924 composition, "Rhapsody in Blue", Johnson created his own composition of similar format and scale in 1927 as his first large-scale semi-classical composition. Johnson felt that as an African-American composer he was perhaps even better qualified to fuse jazz and classical forms than Gershwin had been. (Johnson and Gershwin had first met when both men were cutting piano rolls for the Aeolian company around 1917, and had both written songs for a show in England in the early '20s.) "Yamekraw" was first performed at a concert produced by the "Father of the Blues", W.C. Handy, at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1928. Unfortunately, Johnson was not released from his duties as conductor of the musical "Keep Shuffling" that evening, so his protege Thomas "Fats" Waller played the piano solo part at the concert. The piece was quite successful - it was used as the soundtrack of a 1930 Vitaphone motion picture short subject, and as the overture to Orson Welles's production of Macbeth later in the 1930s, and was recorded several times - and this success inspired Johnson's further efforts in the jazz-classical fusion area, such as his "Harlem Symphony" of 1932 and his "Concerto Jazz A Mine" in 1934. Furthermore, William Grant Still, who arranged the orchestral parts for that concert, was evidently inspired by the piece's success to go on to create his own compositions for full orchestra, such as his Afro-American Symphony of 1931. As one of the first successful large-scale musical works by an African-American composer, "Yamekraw" thus played an important role in the development of American music in the twentieth century.

These performances of "Yamekraw" used Still's original orchestrations, and many details of the interpretation were directly based on Johnson's own recording his composition in its piano solo version ( available on CD from the Foundation ). The Foundation is proud to have been a part of the presentation of this beautiful and historically significant work.