RENMINBI Tour and New Life in Boston!

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”