Jenny Olivia Johnson
Jenny Olivia Johnson was born in 1978 in Santa Monica, CA. At 18 she moved to New York City to attend Barnard College, where she earned a BA in Music (magna cum laude) studying music composition with Jonathan Kramer. She went on to earn a Masters in Classical Composition at Manhattan School of Music (2002), as a student of composer J. Mark Stambaugh, and a Ph.D. in Music at New York University (2009), where she worked with composers Louis Karchin, Elizabeth Hoffman, and Mario Davidovsky. She is currently an Associate Professor of Music at Wellesley College, where she teaches courses in experimental music, sound art, digital audio, writing, and critical theories of sound.
Her work has been performed by such ensembles as The Industry, Wild Up, Wild Rumpus, Avant New Music Festival, BMOP (Boston Modern Orchestra Project), Rhymes With Opera, ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), Alarm Will Sound, the Asko|Schoenberg Ensemble, Ensemble Robot, the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival ensemble, the Arditti Quartet, Orkest “De Ereprijs”, the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, and New York City Opera, who performed two of her short operas at their VOX Contemporary Opera festivals in 2006 and 2007.
Jenny is also honored to work closely and frequently with individual collaborators, including soprano P. Lucy McVeigh [get a website, Lucy!], soprano Megan Schubert, mezzo Amanda Crider, flutist Janet McKay, flutist Jessica Schmitz, flutist Yong Su Clark [get a website, Yong!], conductor Nathaniel Berman, cellist/composer Peter Gregson, cellist David Russell, percussionist/composer Morgan Doctor, violinist Gabriella Diaz, bassist Eleonore Oppenheim, percussionist Elizabeth DeLamater, pianists Eliko Akahori, Isabelle O’Connell, and Jenny Tang, percussionist/composer Jude Traxler, guitarist/composer Lisa Liu, violinist/composer/innovator Todd Reynolds, and many others.
Jenny is currently working on an electroacoustic opera, “The After Time,” about the mysterious suicide of a beautiful college student, and the resulting erotic entanglement of two women who are adjacently grieving her loss.