Scott Johnson Composer

Below is an industrial strength bio, as well as several smaller sizes for various professional uses.

But first let me break the third-person barrier for a moment, and talk about what’s behind all of this. I think that often a composer or group of composers (or any sort of artist) will spend most of their lives chipping away at some problem that loomed very large for them when they were young. For me, it was a fairly simple issue: why can’t there be contemporary classical music that sounds like the time and place I live in?

I’ve devoted most of my efforts to creating a hybrid music, in which the complexity of the classical tradition opens a welcoming door to musical details and emotional associations from popular musics –- not because some imagined audience might enjoy them, but because I enjoy them. A little background will explain how and why this is personally and artistically important to me.

Many civilians out there are puzzled because most of the “classical” composers they’ve heard of seem to be dead, and some are curious about what contemporary classical music might be like. That’s where I started also, when as a kid playing guitar in rock bands, I heard the “Rite of Spring” for the first time. By the time I got to college, I was studying music theory during the week, and playing in bars on the weekends. But this cultural moment, in the early 1970’s, was the high water mark of High Modernist compositional styles, and I had simply never heard written music built from the familiar instruments and gestures of my own culture. To do so was, quite simply, to violate a taboo, and any offender would be duly excluded from the company of the “serious” composers of the Western tradition. This isolationist attitude, as we can see now, would itself have offended most of those composers, who tended to regularly mount raids on their own folk musics.

So I gave up. At 22 I moved to New York City, determined to abandon music and be a visual artist, and landed in Soho and the East Village, which were then the artist neighborhoods of lower Manhattan. Being downtown in 1975 was like being in Montparnasse in the 1920’s –- within a year or two I’d met many of the best painters, sculptors, musicians, and choreographers of the time, and this open-ended atmosphere convinced me that I might able to come up with some serious music that included my bar-band chops. Sound crept back into my still-immature visual work, and within a few years only music was left.

The bio below begins at this point, and the decades of musical life that have followed cover my years as a “Downtown” composer, when those were still fighting words, through to the more congenial situation that exists today. Now once-opposing camps have absorbed some of each other’s DNA, electro-acoustic ensembles and creative relationships with our musical vernacular are gradually finding a home in the concert hall, and young composers can freely use whatever materials appeal to them. I suggest that anyone interested in where I went with these early ideas and impulses go the “Writings” section of this site, and look at the brief “Statement 1985”, and “Hybrids, Thoroughbreds, and Survival”.

Trained in both music and visual arts at the University of Wisconsin, Johnson’s early experiments in combining prerecorded tape and electric instruments culminated in the groundbreaking John Somebody (1980-82), in which the pitches and rhythms of recorded speech became the source material for an instrumental score; a technique which spread as digital sampling became common in the mid-1980's. Other efforts in this field include How It Happens, a major work based on the voice of the late journalist I. F. Stone, as well as Convertible Debts, The Value of People and Things, and Americans, all of which combine voice sampling with electro-acoustic ensembles.

Johnson's scores make extensive use of musical materials and sounds drawn from the American vernacular, and he has premiered most of his electric guitar writing himself. He has appeared at festivals, concert halls, and art museums throughout Europe and North America: first with self-performed compositions for solo electric guitar, tape, and electronics; later with an octet modeled on the American big band and rock traditions; followed by an electric quartet of violin, cello, electric guitar, and piano/synthesizer (released on the Point CD, Rock/Paper/Scissors). New York City concert venues for Mr. Johnson's ensembles have included Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, the Knitting Factory, and The Kitchen.

Johnson's commissioned works include Stalking Horse for the American Composer’s Orchestra, Bowery Haunt for the Cygnus Ensemble, The Pietist and The Hedonist for the New Millennium Ensemble (commissioned by the Koussevitsky Foundation), The Illusion of Guidance for the Bang On A Can All-Stars, How It Happens and Bird in the Domes for the Kronos Quartet; I Am New York City for soprano Dora Ohrenstein (premiered by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra), the score for Paul Schrader's film Patty Hearst, and Before Winter, recorded for the Boston Ballet by Mr. Johnson's own ensemble. He is the recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitsky award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and four grants from the New York State Council on the Arts; as well as grants and commission support from Lincoln Center, the Meet The Composer/Reader’s Digest Commissioning fund, the Jerome Foundation, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Concert Artists Guild, and the Mary Flagler Cary Trust.

Johnson’s recent concert appearances include Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Japan Society, the Lincoln Center Festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, Yale University, the Schleswig-Holstien Festival, a chamber concert with members of the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s “Great Day In New York” series. Other recent premieres include performances by the Bang On A Can All-Stars at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, and Sentieri Selvaggi at Teatro Dell’Elfo in Milan. Johnson has also published articles and essays on contemporary music, one of which is included in Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin’s “Music In The Western World.” He has lectured on his music and ideas at leading conservatories and universities, including San Francisco and Peabody Conservatories, Senzaku Ongaku Daigaku, New York University, The Manhattan School of Music, and Yale.

Johnson's scores generally employ both acoustic and electric/electronic instruments, and he has premiered most of his electric guitar writing himself. Compositions which feature sampled voice include the groundbreaking 1982 John Somebody, as well as Americans, Convertible Debts, The Value of People and Things and How It Happens, (commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, and based upon voice recordings of the late journalist I.F. Stone). Awards include a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitsky commission, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and four grants from the New York State Council on the Arts; as well as grants and commission support from Lincoln Center, the Meet The Composer/Reader’s Digest Commissioning fund, the Jerome Foundation, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Concert Artists Guild/Mary Flagler Cary Trust. New York City concert venues for Mr. Johnson's own ensembles have included Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, the Knitting Factory, and The Kitchen, as well as concert halls, art museums, and festivals throughout Europe and North America.

Johnson’s recent concert appearances include Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Japan Society, the Lincoln Center Festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, Yale University, the Schleswig-Holstien Festival, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s “Great Day In New York” series. Other recent premieres include the Bang On A Can All-Stars at Lincoln Center, the New Millennium Ensemble and Cygnus at Merkin Hall, and Sentieri Selvaggi in Milan. Johnson has also published articles and essays on contemporary music, and has lectured at leading conservatories and universities, including San Francisco and Peabody Conservatories, Senzaku Ongaku Daigaku, New York University, The Manhattan School of Music, and Yale.

Composer Scott Johnson has been a pioneering voice in the new relationship being forged between the classical tradition and the popular culture that surrounds it. Since the early 1980’s, he has played an influential role in the trend towards incorporating rock-derived instrumentation into traditionally scored compositions, and the use of taped, sampled and MIDI-controlled electronic elements within instrumental ensembles. His music has been heard in performances by the Kronos Quartet, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Bang On A Can All-Stars, and his own ensembles; in dance works performed by the Boston Ballet, the London Contemporary Dance Theater, and the Ballets de Monte Carlo; in Paul Schrader's film Patty Hearst, and in recordings on the Nonesuch, CRI, Point, and Tzadik labels. Johnson's scores generally mix acoustic and electric/electronic instruments, and he has premiered most of his electric guitar writing himself. Compositions which feature sampled voice include the groundbreaking 1982 John Somebody, as well as How It Happens, commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, and based upon voice recordings of the late journalist I.F. Stone. Johnson’s recent concert appearances include Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Japan Society, the Lincoln Center Festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, Yale University, the Schleswig-Holstien Festival, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s “Great Day In New York” series. Other premieres include works for the Bang On A Can All-Stars at Lincoln Center, and the New Millennium Ensemble and Cygnus at Merkin Hall. Awards include a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and a Koussevitsky commission. Johnson has also lectured at leading conservatories and universities, including San Francisco and Peabody Conservatories, Senzaku Ongaku Daigaku, New York University, The Manhattan School of Music, and Yale.