An Evening with Virginia Johnson and Akua Dixon
May 14, 2026 @ 6:00PM — 9:00PM Eastern Time (US & Canada) Add to Calendar
The Africa Center: 1280 Fifth Ave New York, NY 10029 Get Directions
Please join us to support The Harlem Chamber Players
Please join us for this fundraising event to support The Harlem Chamber Players and our work, including community and educational programs. Many of our concerts are free and open to the public, and when we do charge admission, ticket prices cover less than 20% of the costs of producing the concert. We need your support to continue bringing live affordable and accessible music uptown.
An evening of music and conversation in honor of Virginia Johnson and Akua Dixon.
Join us for music, food, and an informal conversation with the Founding Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem Virginia Johnson and National Endowment for the Arts multi-laureate cellist-composer Akua Dixon.
This evening will include performances by members of The Harlem Chamber Players with food, wines, and dessert.
FEATURING
Virginia Johnson, guest of honor
Akua Dixon, guest of honor
Claire Chan, violin
Ashley Horne, violin
William Frampton, viola
Wayne Smith, cello
PROGRAM
TBA
RSVP no later than May 1st.
ACCESSIBILITY
Ramp
access is available at The Africa Center’s main entrance at 1280 Fifth
Avenue. The Center’s auditorium, atrium, and restroom
facilities are wheelchair accessible.
TICKETS
Start at $150.
ABOUT VIRGINIA JOHNSON
A
founding member of Dance Theatre of Harlem, Virginia Johnson was one of
its principal ballerinas over a career that spanned nearly 30 years.
After retiring in 1997, Ms. Johnson went on to found Pointe Magazine and
was editor-in chief for 10 years. A native of Washington, D.C., Ms.
Johnson began her training with Therrell Smith. She studied with Mary
Day at the Washington School of Ballet and graduated from the Academy of
the Washington School of Ballet. She went on to be a University Scholar
in the School of the Arts at New York University before joining Dance
Theatre of Harlem. Virginia Johnson is universally recognized as one of
the great ballerinas of her generation and is perhaps best known for her
performances in the ballets Giselle, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Fall River Legend.
She has received such honors as a Young Achiever Award from the
National Council of Women, Outstanding Young Woman of America Award, the
Dance Magazine Award, a Pen and Brush Achievement Award, the Washington
Performing Arts Society’s 2008-2009 Pola Nirenska Lifetime Achievement
Award and the 2009 Martha Hill Fund Mid-Career Award.
ABOUT AKUA DIXON
Cellist-Composer-Conductor
Akua Dixon has been touring the world with her original music and jazz
arrangements for string quartet. A native New Yorker, Akua has won two
awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, for composition (1979)
and performance (1981). She is the 1998 recipient of the African
American Classical Music Award given by Spelman College. Her jazz
release, Akua’s Dance, was voted one of the top 25 albums of 2018 and
received a four-star review in DownBeat. Akua is the first cellist to win the DownBeat Critics Poll, putting the cello on the jazz map!
Akua is the creator of Quartette Indigo, “jazz’s leading string quartet.” They’ve recorded with Woody Shaw and Dizzy Gillespie. A versatile composer, her string arrangements and quartet can be heard on the Grammy award-winning CD, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and the Grammy-nominated CD, A Rose Is Still A Rose by Aretha Franklin. Akua notated and conducted the ballet Riverside by Judith Jamison, with music by Kimati Dinizulu for Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theatre at City Center (1995).
She has performed with Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Hale Smith, Max Roach, Betty Carter, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Akua has performed at The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Tanglewood, the Blue Note, Dizzy’s Coca-Cola and at major concert halls, jazz festivals and clubs throughout the US, Europe, Spain, Scandinavia, Greece, Russia and the Caribbean. Akua has lectured and given educational concerts and workshops for Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Akua was the Assistant Principal Cellist in the Dance Theater of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Orchestras. She was founding cellist in the Uptown String Quartet and Max Roach Double Quartet. She was a member of the Apollo Theatre Orchestra and worked on Broadway as solo cellist, on stage, for Doonesbury and in orchestra pits for Dreamgirls, Black Broadway, Barnum and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
She is a graduate of New York City’s prestigious High School of Performing Arts.
ABOUT THE HARLEM CHAMBER PLAYERS
The
Harlem Chamber Players is an ethnically diverse collective of
professional musicians dedicated to bringing high caliber, affordable,
accessible live music to people in the Harlem community and beyond.
Founded in 2008, The Harlem Chamber Players annually presents a rich
season of formal live concerts, indoors, outdoors, and online. They also
promote arts inclusion and equal access to the arts, bringing live
music to underserved communities and promoting shared community arts and
cultural engagement. The group was first inspired by the late Janet
Wolfe, a long-time patron of minority musicians and founder of the NYC
Housing Authority Symphony Orchestra. The Harlem Chamber Players have
presented culturally relevant programs at numerous venues throughout the
city and collaborated with many other arts organizations. The Harlem
Chamber Players are also Artists-in-residence at the Harlem School of
the Arts.
They have been featured on national radio on WQXR as well as The Greene Space at WQXR and WNYC. The Harlem Chamber Players have also been mentioned in articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Musical America, and on NPR, NBC, and Here and Now on ABC. The Harlem Chamber Players were awarded the 2022 Sam Miller Award for the Performing Arts administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.