Jenny Olivia Johnson composes music that ranges from compressed 20-minute operas to epic pop songs to highly
abstract religious masses. Her work is deeply influenced by minimalism, noise rock, 80’s pop songs, and vernacular television; and she also draws a great deal of inspiration from her academic work on synaesthesia, acoustic memory, and childhood trauma. Jenny has collaborated with such artists and ensembles as ICE, Alarm Will Sound, the Asko|Schoenberg Ensemble, Ensemble Robot, Bang on a Can, the Arditti Quartet, orkest de ereprijs, Voices of Change, The Young People’s Chorus of New York City, composer and singer Corey Dargel, organist Maxine Thevenot, flutist Janet McKay, soprano Megan Schubert, and the New York City Opera, which performed two of her short operas at their VOX Contemporary Opera festivals in 2006 and 2007. Jenny is also a drummer, most recently active with Winter Company (a laptop/percussion duo with composer Paula Matthusen), and indie rock band RENMINBI.
Jenny’s honors and awards include the NYU Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship (2008-09), an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award (2006), two CAP grants from the American Music Center (2006, 2007), the Prix de Composition from the Conservatoire Americain de Fontainebleau (2004), and an Honorable Mention for the 2007 Lise Waxer Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology. She has held artist residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (2005, 2008) and the Banff Centre for the Arts (2008), and was recently a finalist for the 2008 Gaudeamus Prize.
In May 2009, Jenny completed her Ph.D. in music composition and theory at New York University, and she also holds degrees from Manhattan School of Music (MM 2002) and Barnard College at Columbia University (BA 2000).