David Johnson

Composer, flautist and electronic musician from the circle of the Feedback Studio Köln. Born in Batavia in the state of New York in 1940 and died in Basel in 2021, the American completed his composition studies at Harvard University in 1964 and studied privately with Nadia Boulanger in Paris; from 1964 to 1967 he attended the Kölner Kurse für Neue Musik, where he himself taught electronic music in 1968. In 1966/67 he assisted Karlheinz Stockhausen at the WDR-Studio für elektronische Musik on “Hymnen” and controlled the live electronics of the chamber orchestra version of “Mixtur”; in 1967 and 1968 he took part in Darmstadt in “Ensemble” and “Musik für ein Haus”, and in 1970 in Osaka in the process compositions “Spiral”, “Pole” and “Expo”. In the same year he founded the Feedback Studio in Cologne with Johannes Fritsch and Rolf Gehlhaar and was its technical director until 1975; for Fritsch’s “Hochtöner” (1974) he built the frequency divider used in it. In 1972, together with Helmut Lachenmann, he directed the composition studio of the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, and from 1975 to 1986 the electronic studio of the Musik-Akademie Basel. Five albums connect him with Cybele, and all belong to the series with which the label documents the work of this studio. On the sampler for its twenty-fifth anniversary (1996) and on Ton-Antiton (2001) he is represented among several composers. In Johannes Fritsch’s Violectra (2003) he carries the entire production together with the composer, Fritsch on viola d’amore and synthesizer, Johnson on synthesizer; in the 3 Trios (2006) he plays flute and synthesizer alongside Fritsch on viola and Rolf Gehlhaar on percussion. To these is added a contribution to the audiobook production Weht ein Stadtspaziergang durch den Traum (2014).