Opera premiered at the Festival d'Avignon in 1989 for the French Bicentennial. A numbered edition of 200 copies.
Five movements for percussion trio: Similarities, Differences, Canons, Well-Formed, and Mirrors. Easy to play for percussionists who never make mistakes. Small instruments. About 15 minutes.
Someone is at the door, but the two singers are too tired to answer it. They sing many cadences on the word "yawn." Two sopranos and piano.
Six ways of transforming a melody of two notes into a melody of four notes, eight notes, 16 notes, 32 notes, etc. until you have a piece as long as you like. A rather formidable concentration exercise,
Five movements for orchestra, each following the dragon formula, also known as the "paper-folding formula." 18 minutes, orchestra material on rental.
She looks for her thimble and finally finds it on her finger. Soprano and piano, text in English, French, German. 15 minutes.
A difficult piece for a talking and singing juggler, who normally doesn't drop balls but eventually will.
The baritone catches fish and hangs them up to dry while the tenor looks on, wondering why. Baritone and piano, in English, 15 minutes.
The baritone, the tenor and the soprano all try to listen to time for 15 minutes. The pianist and the audience do too. In French but easily translatable.
One explains how many ways there are of putting six eggs into two baskets, with the help of a narrator and two unspecified instrumentalists, who play the permutations as melodies. Also published in French
A suite of short pieces for unspecified upper-register instruments. 20 minutes.
Trio for saxophone, guitar and bass, written for the German ensemble Ugly Culture. The title means "Unison Polyrhythms." 18 minutes.
One of Johnson's most often performed pieces, written for Jon Deak, and also interpreted by Bertram Turetzky, Gary Karr, and many other virtuosos. A classic among bassists.
The falling thirds are played by some solo instrument, the drum keeps the beat, and everything is the result of a drawing. Eight minutes.
The composer writes : In this work I wanted to listen to all the ways that chords of one note, two notes, three notes, four notes, and five notes could be orchestrated using five instruments.
The first Johnson string quartet, premiered by the Brindisi Quartet in 1994. Eight movements, each following a mathematical formula, 20 minutes.
The composer's first opera, and the best known. Published in America by G. Schirmer, but now also available in French from Editions 75.
Piece for player piano, in collaboration with Wolfgang Heisig. No score, just another roll, ready to roll.
The subtle differences between the colors of these two isntruments continue for 16 minutes. Harp and piano.
About the score, the composer writes : The numbers 1 to 19 represent 19 notes of the chromatic scale. Begin with the central chord (4, 11, 16), and following the lines, move to adjacent chords, always
This pieces makes good use of the fact that organ sounds can be held indefinitely, quite different from instruments that have to breathe, and the music is special in another important way. Usually when an
Exactly 60 minutes of music for piano.
104 drawings with music notation symbols, many of which have been reprinted in magazines and as program covers. Perhaps the best known is the "Celestial Music for Imaginary Trumpets," which ascends 103