I’m thrilled to announce that MAGNETIC ISLAND, the fantastic hybrid-rock Brooklyn-based project in which I sometimes play drums, will be playing a very special show with STARRING, a band I’ve admired since they started up in 2008. Even more awesome is that fact that STARRING features some of my favorite people ever: my brilliant grad school colleagues Clara Latham, Amy Cimini, and Michael Gallope, all of whom have inspired and helped me as a scholar, and all of whom totally knock my socks off as musicians and rock stars!! Come see us all shred together, and help celebrate STARRING’s upcoming record release on DEATH BY AUDIO records!

Thursday, June 10, 2010 8pm-midnight
Death By Audio
49 S. 2nd St.
Brooklyn NY 11211
8:45pm Unstoppable Death Machines
9:30pm Magnetic Island
10:30pm Skeleton$
11:30pm Starring

On June 1, the IKTUS Percussion Quartet premiered CASINO (STUDY ON THE OCEANIC FEELING), my recent installation-style composition for tape, 4 percussionists, and audience members (each of whom are offered tuned wine glasses and candles and asked to wander around the space, contributing to the sound of the piece as they see fit). Given the experimental nature of the piece, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I thought the “performance” (I might instead prefer the word “experience”) went really well. Fortunately, the entire program was conceived around notions of ritual, which was exactly the kind of atmosphere I was hoping to evoke. The audience was also warm and willing to participate, and seemed excited to become part of the sounds being made; I even heard one audience member singing quietly to herself as she passed me by.

Many thanks to IKTUS and all the other composers for a very cool show!

This past May, the fabulously inspiring RHYMES WITH OPERA teamed up with the awesome Baltimore hip-hip group SOUL CANNON to premiere my opera BOOK OF GAZES. It was a whirlwind “opera tour” that was both like and unlike the handful of rock tours I’ve taken as a drummer with RENMINBI: we were on the road for 3 days in a handful of cars, toting gear in and out of a variety of colorful and sometimes shockingly cool and beautiful spaces (Baltimore’s Copycat Annex was a gorgeous loft-apartment-turned-small-theater, complete with friendly neighbors and kittycats; Philly’s The Fidget Space was a jaw-dropping loft whose walls were splayed with sunset-stained windows overlooking a gorgeous cityscape; and NYC’s venue was the Tank, an old familiar black-box haunt whose high ceilings and pre-war touches lent a particularly gritty, wailing vibe to this decidedly late-night-inspired piece). We also, much like rockers on tour, had to deal with drastically different acoustics and vibes each night, which meant that each performance had a very different flavor–Baltimore was amped and intense, Philly was dreamy and contemplative, New York was anxious and edgy. I had a great time telling and retelling this strange story of forbidden desire and cheesy, creepy love songs with a fantastic group of people, and I’m so grateful to everyone who helped make this happen! To read more about BOOK OF GAZES (and–soon!–to hear some clips), please visit my music page. Meanwhile, please enjoy some iPhone memories of the experience (including pics of the rehearsal process, which took place in a fantastically atmospheric warehouse in West Baltimore):

RENMINBI, the beautifully intense Brooklyn duo I’ve been privileged to play drums with off and on since 2003, have changed their name! They are now MAGNETIC ISLAND. You can read all about the reasons behind the name change and their future plans here.

As their now-Boston-based drummer (sharing the kit with their fabulous NYC drummer, Dom), I’m thrilled about these changes. They signify the band’s increasing commitment to open collaboration, intensified studio work, frequent digital releases, and other 21st-century-style goodies. Stay tuned for more news about my future work with the ISLAND….some exciting plans are underway.

I’ll be giving two conference papers and an informal talk over the next few months: a paper at the Society for American Music conference in Ottawa, Canada (March 21, 2010), an informal talk at the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College (April 5, 2010, as part of their Salon Monday series), and a paper at the “Uses and Abuses of Sound” conference in Koli, Finland (June 16-19, 2010–I’m so excited about this one!)

The SAM paper will draw from a chapter of my dissertation on “sexual abuse sounds[capes]” in 1980s/1990s North American popular culture (television, film, and especially popular music) and their impact on a group of real-life childhood sexual abuse survivors who grew up surrounded by them. The other two will center on “The Rugmaker,” a devastatingly beautiful string quartet by composer and survivor Bunita Marcus (pictured here) and “Learning to Walk,” a gorgeous and evocative digital audio work by Andra McCartney. Bunita and Andra are two of the most generous people I’ve ever known, and working with them on this project over the past year has been immensely inspiring.

It’s been interesting to return to my dissertation work after a semester-long hiatus. While I remain strongly committed to the project (and am very hopeful about what it might become….stay tuned), I sense that I’ll be making all kinds of refinements as I begin to turn the diss into a book. To do academic work on memory–especially “unconscious” memory–is to continually confront the more metaphysical, ineffable domains of human life, which I would never want to reduce to conclusions or generalizations. I’ve been operating instead on the notion of singularity: that lives, while potentially similar, are irreducible, resistant to theory. (I’ll probably have a lot more to say about this in the coming months, especially in the wake of a seminar I’m currently teaching at Wellesley on music, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience. I’m already indebted to my students for bringing up so many crucial questions about what it means to study musical experiences with scientific tools!)

I also feel so lucky to have heard the stories of the survivors in my dissertation, and it makes me curious about other survivors. How many others are there out there, remembering differently, remembering through sound? How many of them embrace the word “survivor,” and how many eschew it? How many feel marked, and how many feel (like Elizabeth Loftus, for instance) that the experience was meaningless, a blip, hardly worth a mention? How many wonder whether it happened at all?

There is no way to quantify experiences of trauma. The best I can do is keep listening.

I’m thrilled to announce that my new video opera, “Book of Gazes,” will be premiered by RHYMES WITH OPERA in May 2010! Please stay tuned for more information–we’re planning a tour with performances in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.

I’m excited to announce that the IKTUS Percussion Quartet will be performing a new piece of mine–”Casino (Study on the Oceanic Feeling)”–on June 1, 2010 at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York City! Please join us for an evening of intriguing new works conceived around the idea of a “percussion labyrinth.”

Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 8pm
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
619 Lexington Avenue, NYC

http://www.saintpeters.org/

One of my favorite longtime collaborators, Australian flutist Janet McKay, will be performing “beautiful//fragment” (my solo for amplified flute and video, written for Janet in 2007) as part of the AMAZING WOMEN 4 showcase with American flutist Jane Rigler. The concert takes place on Tuesday, October 27 at 8:00 PM, at the Visy Theater in Brisbane. Please check out what promises to be an amazing show!

For more information, please visit
http://www.brisbanepowerhouse.org/events/view/amazing-women/

The phenomenal young bassist Eleonore Oppenheim will be performing a set of contemporary works for double bass this Sunday, October 18 at 7:00 PM at Barbes in Park Slope, Brooklyn, including my amplified bass solo “HOME” (2007). Please come check out the show, which also includes the brilliant James Moore on solo guitar, and a set by the haunting Oliphant (James Moore, Jennifer Stock, and Pete Wise)!

BARBES
376 9th St. (corner of 6th Ave.) Park Slope, Brooklyn
Phone: 347 422 0248
www.barbesbrooklyn.com
accessible by the F and R trains

My two-week tour with Brooklyn-based indie rock band RENMINBI was a huge success! We played over a dozen shows in venues ranging from well-known rock clubs to DIY warehouse spaces, and drove thousands of miles together in a Prius (no small feat: the Prius contained my entire drumset, Lisa’s guitar and amp, SMV’s keys and stand, our luggage, and our beautiful, sometimes sweaty selves). The DIY shows (Nashville, Kansas City, and Ames) were actually some of my favorite musical experiences ever, including rock and classical: never before have I encountered more enthusiastic audiences, gathered in massive, sweaty tangles of headbanging bliss, screaming and hollering and jumping up and down, making me remember (as though I could ever forget!) why it is I became a musician. A huge thanks to Lisa, SMV, and all the folks who came out and supported us, let us crash on their floors, and played shows with us! It was truly one of the most intense and amazing times of my life.

I also got the opportunity to blog about my recent drumming escapades on the website for MODERN DRUMMER! Check it out here!

After the tour, I immediately packed my bags and relocated to Brookline, MA, where I’m starting an exciting new job teaching composition and theory at Wellesley College! I’m really looking forward to meeting my students and helping them bring their musical ideas to life. I have such clear memories of being an undergrad and constantly hearing the pulsating, color-ridden noises in my head, urgently trying to escape. I’m so curious as to what the Wellesley composition students will bring to the table, and how they’ll relate to one another as fellow artists. I’m sure I have just as much to learn from them as they from me.

On the composition front, I’ve been working like mad on my new opera for Rhymes With Opera, whose new website is fabulous! There’s a teaser up there about my piece, which (several months ago) went by the moniker “East River (You and I Have Met Before).” Alas, it may change. I don’t know how it is for other composers, but I tend to have no idea what will actually emerge until I sit down and begin writing in earnest. The story that’s unfurling now is not dissimilar to the one I proposed to Ruby back in March….but it’s become deeper, darker, and more honest. And thus, it might need a new title. I don’t know yet. I’ll keep you posted………….

(I’ve also been thinking a lot about Lacoue-Labarthe’s “Typography” and “Echo of the Subject” and Derrida’s “On Touching Jean-Luc Nancy.” “When our eyes touch….” and “all fiction is at bottom a lie–even true fiction.”….agh)

So, that could certainly end up affecting things on a titular level as well.

“More soon,”

“Jenny Johnson”