|
DOUGLAS BRUCE JOHNSON was born in
Oakland, California in 1949. He studied with Charles Fulkerson, Floyd
Glende, Charles Moon and Leon Wagner at Humboldt State University in
Arcata, California. From 1970 to 1972 he studied in Vienna with Friedrich
Neumann at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst. Completing
his BA in Music cum laude at Humboldt State University in 1974, he
performed in chamber groups and orchestras. In 1980 he returned to the San
Francisco Bay Area, performing as a violinist in the Berkeley Symphony
Orchestra under Kent Nagano, who commissioned his first large orchestral
works, and in the Oakland Symphony under Calvin Simmons. He entered
graduate school in 1983, earning the Ph.D. in Music at the University of
California, Berkeley in 1989, where he worked with composers Andrew Imbrie
and Olly Wilson, and with conductor Michael Senturia.
In 1988 he joined the music department
at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. His compositions have delighted
audiences across the United States, as well as Europe and Latin
America.
The composer reveals: "My music
seeks an immediate connection with listeners' emotions, with their bodies,
and with their minds. I compose for "now — to communicate with
people around me in the big "here" that our world is. My
compositions are based in the sound of acoustic instruments and the human
voice. I seek to emphasize the emotional appeal that sounds have for the
listener, whatever their background or training. The expressive effect
produced by familiar musical content in unexpected contexts gives my music
its sustaining energy. Rooted in European traditions, my music still
sounds American. It is an ongoing conversation between the past and the
present, between "old" sounds and
"new" sounds. I do not adhere to
any prevailing school of compositional style, though I freely acknowledge
influences from four 20th century greats: Berg, Bartók, Britten and
Copland."
For complete and current information about the
Douglas Bruce Johnson, please visit http://www.trincoll.edu/~djohnso1/dbjbio.html
|
 |
