|
(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Scott Johnson (1952), a guitarist from Wisconsin, moved to New York to become a sculptor, and for his sculptures he began composing electronic soundtracks. In 1983 he made his recording debut with John Somebody, a three-movement suite for electric guitar, woodwinds, percussion, and tape that blends rock and classical avant-garde, more precisely the tape manipulations of Steve Reich and heavy-metal riffs, using "speech patterns" as the building blocks of the composition. He later proved to be a keen orchestrator of mixed ensembles (the typical rock trio plus winds), for example in the score Before Winter, for the Boston ballet. In 1987 he composed his first string quartet, Bird In The Domes, a potpourri of influences from Schoenberg and Chuck Berry.
Patti Hearst (Nonesuch, 1988) was the soundtrack to a Paul Schrader film.
His significance lies not only in having introduced the electric guitar into concert halls. Johnson also invented a technique for composing what he calls involuntary songs: this involves manipulating recordings of voices (speaking, laughing, crying, and so on) until they acquire a musical quality.
How It Happens (1993) is scored for a string quartet and sampled vocals.
Johnson has also composed the chamber piece
Confetti of Flesh in Dora Ohrenstein "Urban Diva" (CRI, 1993),
dedicated to life in the city, and built around a minimal pattern of
notes and voices.
Rock/Paper/Scissors (Polygram, 1996) collects a few more chamber works
for a quartet of violin, cello, electric guitar, and piano/synthesizer
that display his concept of mixing rock guitar and neoclassical composition.
The 20-minute Americans (2003),
another speech-sampling work, was based on the voices of immigrants and scored for a septet of clarinet, sax,
viola, guitar, bass, piano and drums.
Up and Back was scored for shamisen, electric guitar, cello, and piano.
Mind Out of Matter (2015) is based on the sampled voice of philosopher Daniel Dennett.
Assembly Required (2019) was another work for his favorite septet context.
Johnson died in 2023.
|
