Tribute to Francis Johnson

Rodney Mack

had never heard the name

Francis Johnson

before encountering it during a tour of the Paul Robeson House in West Philly. That's not hard to understand, given that few people, even in Johnson's hometown of Philadelphia, have any idea of his existence.

But it should come as no surprise that Johnson's life and music soon became a source of fascination for Mack, given the parallels between the experiences of the two musicians living two centuries apart.

Both Johnson and Mack are internationally recognized African-American musicians and bandleaders. Johnson played the then newly invented keyed bugle, a predecessor to the trumpet, the instrument on which Mack has become a master soloist.

Both are dedicated to uniting a variety of styles, Johnson leading his integrated group through a combination of popular song and military music, Mack's Philadelphia Big Brass intent on crossing genre lines from classical to jazz to funk.

The result of Mack's ensuing research is a benefit concert this Sunday to raise money toward the West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance's $3 million effort to renovate and restore the Paul Robeson House, where the singer, actor and activist spent his final years.

The concert will feature the world premieres of arrangements of several Johnson compositions, commissioned for Mack's Big Brass group, some of which will feature special guest Branford Marsalis, Mack's cousin.

The program also includes the classically trained Philadelphia bluegrass trio Time For Three.

In addition, the Philadelphia Free Library is presenting the exhibit "The Life and Times of Francis Johnson: America's First International Superstar," through June 24.

The link to Robeson and his civil rights activism are especially appropriate given some of the grimmer commonalities between Johnson's and Mack's stories.

Johnson, born in Society Hill in 1792, achieved his fame at a time when others of his race still toiled as slaves. He became the first American to tour Europe with a musical group, including a performance in England before Queen Victoria.

Yet his band, composed of white and free-born black musicians, was fined and ordered to leave St. Louis, Mo., then a slave state.

An 1843 concert reportedly ended with a mob chasing the group, shouting racial epithets and throwing stones and rotten eggs. Several of the musicians were injured, one seriously.

A sad echo of those incidents occurred in Madrid, Spain, in 2002. Mack, a New Orleans-born Curtis Institute grad and now principal trumpet for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, was then filling the same role with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, when he was attacked by undercover police looking for a Nigerian car thief.

They singled Mack out based on his height and race.

"The only thing that saved my life was that I was saying, 'I'm an American citizen' in English and in Spanish," Mack recalled. "But after that happened, it made international news, and it came out that they'd been abusing a lot of immigrants in the city in that way."

Still, the main purpose of the concert, Mack explained, is to pay homage to Johnson, not just by performing his music but by staging the program in such a way that it pays tribute to Johnson's own feelings about music.

"He performed a lot of different styles of music back then," Mack said, "so the idea of this concert is to do the same thing. The main point is that he really wanted to perform with an integrated group of black and white musicians, and that was revolutionary back then.

"This concert is really in tribute to that idea of bringing a lot of different styles together, and that's why there's the jazz element and the bluegrass element and the classical element and the traditional spiritual element - just to show that all these styles can co-exist peacefully in the same concert and actually be an incredible musical experience. His main goal was to entertain the audience."

In fact, Johnson brought the "promenade" concert style back with him from England, introducing the format which would eventually lead to today's pops concerts.

"In Philadelphia he was the main person to call for any sort of social function," Mack said. "A lot of the rich families were very fond of his band, and he played for parties, balls and events like that. But he also was in the military at one point, so his music is a combination of dance music and military music. He liked to perform popular music that people liked to hear."

Mack intends for Philadelphia Big Brass to fulfill a similar function, bringing a variety of music to popular audiences.

"It's been a really incredible experience," Mack said. "But that's what my group does – we play a lot of different styles of music. I'm fortunate that I'm friends with a lot of the top brass players in the world, and I bring them all here to Philadelphia and combine them with some of our excellent brass players here, and we have a really good time." *

E-mail Shaun Brady at bradys@phillynews.com.

Francis Johnson Tribute Concert, Irvine Auditorium, 3401 Spruce St., 3 p.m. Sunday, $35, seniors $25, students $15, 215-569-9700, www.wpcalliance.org.