“Victory Stride”
James P. Johnson (1894-1955)

[1944]

James P. Johnson was a pioneering pianist who developed the influential “Harlem Stride” technique that requires the performer’s left hand to leap rapidly between bass notes and chords. As a composer, he’s best remembered for “The Charleston” from 1923, a song that has defined the zeitgeist of the Roaring Twenties ever since. Far less attention was paid in his lifetime to more weighty projects like his Harlem Symphony from 1932 and the concert he presented at Carnegie Hall in 1944, the same year he recorded this “Victory Stride” with a jazz septet.

Many of Johnson’s “serious” works were lost until the conductor Marin Alsop tracked down the long-forgotten scores in his daughter’s attic in California. This orchestral adaptation of “Victory Stride” was recorded by Alsop with the Concordia Orchestra in 1994.

Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two alto saxophones, tenor saxophone, two bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, strings