Summary
Keith Johnson’s career spans performances at the highest level in the concert hall, art gallery, and on film, TV and radio as well as site-specific performances and ongoing work in the dance theatre. Increasingly, his work is made electronically and often makes use of other musical texts in a process of re-contextualisation. He has a Master’s degree in music composition from Manchester University. A recent project was an experimental composer-in-residency in the Nurrish Lab within the MRC Cell Biology Unit, University College London funded by the Wellcome Trust for which he composed the 18 piano pieces in A book of mutants first performed by Philip Howard, alongside Porous with travel fever/ PMA and serotonin and Still ist mein Herz/ Aldicarb, written for and performed by ensemble [rout]. He is currently working on music for The Glue, a web drama series, and river:cities with sirenscrossing, an international site-specific project based around rivers in London, Dawson City in Canada and Göteburg in Sweden.
Biography
Keith Johnson’s work as a composer includes Just an animal looking for a home (symphony orchestra), performed for broadcast on Radio 3 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Grant Llewelyn and It's a beautiful night from here to the trembling stars (9 players, electronics, video installation, webcast), a multimedia work made in collaboration with artist Sarah Carne, which charts the transit of a pulsar from East to West across the UK. Commissioned by Digital Summer for inter:face, a digital arts festival, and first performed by Ensemble Eleven in Manchester in a shopping centre in 2000, it has since been performed by the London Sinfonietta at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London with a broadcast/webcast on BBC Radio 3, and by the BT Scottish Ensemble at Tramway in Glasgow in 2001.
Palpitation (electronic score) and Fine Bone China (piano, electronics) are two recent full-length works commissioned and toured as a double-bill for Fran Barbe Dance, a company inspired by Japanese Butoh choreographic methods, to venues such as the Phoenix Theatre in Exeter, the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury and the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House in London. Two sections from Palpitation have been re-composed for large orchestra as the piece Horror, and some sections have been used in Night Fangs, an independent American horror film. Chimaera (electronics, violin, piano), their latest full-length work, premiered in London and Australia in 2006. Swampsong (flute, electronics) is currently in development.
Everything is going to be alright (chamber orchestra) was used in 2008 as part of Imbolc, a new site-specific dance work in Vancouver, Canada by sirenscrossing dance company. Someone else’s inner voice, an album of ambient/electronica pieces and Misled by an inner voice, a set of songs on texts by scientists about consciousness are also works-in-progress.
Multimedia works include Lookout (violin, guitar, electronics), a site-specific electro-acoustic and video work made specifically for the empty twelfth floor of an office building, which was commissioned by the ISCM festival in 1998, Return (clarinet/bass clarinet, electronics), commissioned by alectro-ecoustic for Sonic Exchange, an evening of experimental sound-works in November 2001, and 62 miles east (violin, piano, electronics), performed in March and again in August 2000 at Jodrell Bank Planetarium. Made again in collaboration with artist Sarah Carne, using video and 3D images, it was also made into an installation for Kirby Gallery. Saving the world, a short film made with Sarah Carne was recently broadcast on Dutch TV, and has been shown in galleries in the UK and abroad. Other films include BEEP BEEP, and their current film and music project, Hoyotoho!, four films centred on enthusiasts of Wagner’s Ring cycle.
He has also been commissioned and performed by various ensembles including the London Sinfonietta, who have given both Honesty (chamber orchestra) and Sabotage (orchestra) their world premieres—the latter was performed for a second time by the London Sinfonietta in the Musica Strasbourg festival in 1997— and commissioned a new work Don’t Say a Word (clarinet, violin, cello & piano), premiered in April 1998, and repeated in Paris in February 2000, it was also broadcast on Radio France. Honesty was performed by Sinfonia 21 under Martyn Brabbins, and broadcast on Radio 3 in February 2001.
Other works include Sound-House (string sextet) winner of the Royal Over-seas League Award for composition in 1994, Break, break, break (10 players) winner of the Young Composer’s Competition at the Sonorities festival in Belfast in 1991, Secrecy (small orchestra), recommended by the jury of the Osterfestspiele Salzburg composition competition in 1994. Other works include You you you you you you you (electronics), selected for the 60X60 project in the US in 2004, and Perfect Swine (soprano, 5 players), a music theatre work, commissioned and toured by Music Theatre Manchester in 1990-1.
