John Johnson

Pianist/Bassist/Electronic musician John Johnson has been involved in music in some shape or form since he was 8 years old. His father, a jazz trumpeter, taught him the fundamentals of composing and arranging in a jazz context at an early age. Since then he has evolved his artform into more than just jazz, but has mainly stuck to his roots and connected to the idiom that fostered him. Johnson began as a trumpet player at a young age, but in high school was encouraged by a high school teacher to switch to bass. His interest in piano also grew about that time, and soon he was playing with both jazz and rock groups around the Northern California area where he grew up. In college he relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where playing with local jazz musicians of the time further developed his distinctive voice and character on both instruments. His influences on bass tend towards Ron Carter and John Patittucci, with its steady rhythmic timekeeping and upper-range soloing, whereas his piano style sounds more dissonant and unresolved, similar to early McCoy Tyner or Herbie Hancock. His first studio release Electrode served as a soundtrack to an interactive project released in 1997. Other work during the 1990's and early 2000's for film, interactive soundtrack, and advertising work appears on his compilation disc, 12voltarts Corporate Audio Demonstration - Volume 1. In 2004, Johnson wrote and produced Songs For My Father, an homage to the father figures in his life, including his own father. Other releases include Intervention, a mostly electronic soundtrack score to the 12VoltArts brand.

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