A pianist,
composer and transcriber, Vincent Johnson is dedicated to the
preservation of 1920s & 1930s syncopated piano playing. He
was first attracted to piano at age 12, when he heard his friends
playing Scott Joplin rags. Unable to play the piano at the time,
he taught himself to play Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer by
listening to recordings and watching other pianists play these
pieces. During this same period, he enrolled in a music course
at California State University Los Angeles, which introduced him
to music theory.
His interest in ragtime brought him to the Rose Leaf Ragtime Club,
where he was exposed to the many different types of syncopated
piano music that proliferated during the early part of the 20th
Century. In addition to his already extant love for classic ragtime,
he developed an interest in early jazz, advanced ragtime, stride
piano, 1930s pop songs and ballads, and novelty piano. The pianistic
technicality required for these styles necessitated formal piano
lessons and a further study of music theory.
In 2006, Vincent began a string of appearances in RagFest and
at the ragtime musicales held several times each year by Orange
County Ragtime Society. In 2007, Vincent began composing piano
solos and songs as a pastime and has a collection of more than
30 pieces. While his pieces are composed in various syncopated
styles, including foxtrots (“Dancing Daffodils”),
cakewalks (“Betty Crocker’s Cakewalk”), folk
rags (“The Mother Lode Rag”), and tone poems (“Starlight”),
a large majority of his compositions are in the novelty style
popular in the 1920s & 1930s. These pieces reflect the influence
of his favorite composers: Zez Confrey, Arthur Schutt, Roy Bargy,
Lothar Perl, Fred Elizalde, Billy Mayerl, George Gershwin, Sasha
Tsfasman, and Claude Debussy.
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