Sam Johnson

Prelude to Rhymes With Silver by Lou Harrison. Wandering and melancholic, this Prelude sets the tone for a massive twelve-movement solo and ensemble work written for dancers, Rhymes With Silver. I see plumes of incense smoke billowing across an empty stage and into the audience, solo voice setting the vibe for the dance to come. What do you imagine when you listen? Harrison uses an unusual non-diatonic mode I’ve never played before, with scale degrees 1 2 ♭3 ♯4 5 ♭6 ♭♭7, here notated as F G A♭ B C D♭ D♮. The chromatic tetrachord and two augmented seconds give this mode a rhapsodic and other-worldly tonal quality. Have you played or heard this mode before? You can hear me play this and the full band movements of Rhymes With Silver (with violin, viola, cello, piano, and percussion) at Contrary Motion on June 17 & 18 at 7pm at the Columbus Mennonite Church in Clintonville. Contrary Motion is a free concert series every June celebrating experimental music by queer composers in honor of Pride Month! See you there :]

Save the date! Your favorite annual experimental chamber queer concert is coming up! Contrary Motion 2026 will take place on Wednesday June 17 and Thursday June 18 at 7PM at the Columbus Mennonite Church. Our shows are FREE and open to all ages. What does queer music sound like? Come celebrate Pride with a deep dive into the musical soundscapes of queer and trans composers. Contrary Motion is music that explores queer politics, identities, and processes! See you there.

This Sunday March 29 Sweet Teeth will be joining our good buddy Aubrey @xiomamusic at @theramblinghouse for her very special show “you and everyone you love will someday die”. Sweet Teeth plays a lil opening set for Xioma, doors at 5, music at 6:30. I’ve had the honor of orchestrating several of Aubrey’s original tunes for this show. What a joy it has been to weave my own ideas into Aubrey’s and hear these songs evolve with a band of brilliant musicians. Plus, this Xioma set will not hit the recording studio, so it’s a one-night-only situation. Come feel the big feels with us! This is deeply thoughtful music, about the crisis of faith you go through when you outgrow an old way of being in the world. I know you can relate, bestie!!! See you there 💖

A year of art & music & beauty & collaboration! 🤝 I owe a big debt of gratitude to the Greater Columbus Arts Council for their generous financial support. A personal artist grant as well as a large project grant allowed me to collaborate with so many artists. It’s an honor to learn from such brilliant colleagues and to pay them for their work. I love you all! 💖 #GCACGrants #ArtMakesCbus

Chamber Brews Presents: inter/cepted! The @chamberbrews string quartet is delighted to announce a series of two upcoming concerts of new-ish music in collaboration with local arts organizations and businesses! Our events focus on creating connections between live music and listeners through thoughtful storytelling. Come as you are, bring your friends, stay as long as you want, leave with new friends! This program of genre-bending music includes includes Mohammed Fairouz’s sacred and passionate Prophesies, Zachery Meier’s Prayer for Tranquility honoring our queer dead, Pauline Oliveros’s Seventy Chords for Terry (a study on string theory and the vibrational nature of… everything), and Terry Riley’s groovy and churning Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector. So much love goes into assembling this music, and I can’t wait to share it with you! On Tuesday December 2 at 7pm, we will perform on the @johnstonefund series at Short North Stage. This show is free thanks to the generous support of the Johnstones! Join us for an intimate hour of music and conversation. And on Sunday December 14 at 6pm we will team up with the bartenders at @seventh_son_brewing for our most popular event of the year - a music and flavor pairing. Four newly developed cocktails will counterpoint against our four works for string quartet, creating new connections between flavor and sound. Tickets are available at chamber brews dot com!

join us for inter/cepted this December 14th at 6pm: a cocktail pairing with Seventh Son Brewing Co. Taste and enjoy as we distill information from our composers Mohammed Fairouz, Terry Riley, Zachary Meier, and Pauline Oliveros. Each cocktail is paired uniquely with each piece (NA and caffeine free drinks available). Tix available at the link in our bio ✨ Trailer by @yyyycccc4444

Cello merch! My buddy Mark @m.pickman_tattoo made this brilliant cubism-inspired design of cello & plants, our cheeky nod to Picasso’s violin & grapes. This design pays homage to my sweet jungle home cello studio in Columbus, Ohio where I compose, record, and teach 🪴 Pre-orders are live for TWO WEEKS for t-shirts and tote bags! Tees and totes are 30 each. Just fill out the Google form in my bio and send a venmo to @ samjohnsoncello. Pick-up or delivery in Columbus for free, or for 5 bucks I can ship out of town :) PRE-ORDER REQUESTS ARE DUE BY NOVEMBER 16, and will be available in time for Xmas 🤭 This t-shirt is high quality Gildan in a buttery soft 100% cotton, ideal for the musician, student, or art lover in your life. Comfy enough to jam out in! I’m wearing a size L and it’s relaxed and roomy on me 🕺🏻 The tote bag is made of heavy cotton canvas in a HUGE 15x20x5 design, perfect for carrying scores, tablets, snacks, and all the other stuff you need for rehearsal. The black canvas will hide the coffee and beer stains you inevitably pour into it at the gig 🫠 100% of what I make from this merch goes directly to supporting my small teaching operation here in Ohio! Think scores, teaching supplies, venue rental, & a small scholarship fund. Supporting myself and my students as a freelance teacher is challenging and unpredictable - and yet it continues to be so worthwhile. By ordering merch, you are supporting me as a local musician actively mentoring artists in their creative practice. You’re helping us build a beautiful culture of new music in Ohio. I love y’all 💖 📸 by Jeff @jeffreyclarkjr

Day 2 in the studio with Mark Lomax ✨ we love how our collective interests and abilities get to work together to create something magical within so many different genres and projects. Recording Mark’s Black Odes: a Reclamation Suite at @relayrecording with @jonfintel

Slow down. Listen. The cicadas are speaking. Cicadas: haiku scene. This piece honors the moment in High Summer when life is at its fullest. The sun blasts away, humidity hangs heavy, perennial jungles stretch across the land, and the air shudders with the sounds of insects. Cicadas emerge from the ground every year during the warmest months, at a time when I, too, feel most at home in my skin. The stillness, intensity, and radiance are celebrated here. This scene takes the form of a baroque passacaille, or variations on a ground bass. Dissonant intervals emerge to harmonize with the bass, their acoustical interference imitating the vibrating tymbals of annual cicadas. These harmonies become the basis for playful decoration and variation. From a very still beginning, a tentative contredanse materializes before bursting into a raucous gigue. Start to finish, the piece follows a steady acceleration, reflecting the surging arrival of annual cicadas during the hottest days of the year. Stillness— the cicada’s cry drills into the rocks. -Matsuo Bashō Recorded at @urbanartsspace Columbus, OH, USA March 19, 2025 Audio and video engineered by @benjirobinson This is the third and final release of solo cello music I recorded in the Spring of this year. The other works in this series are Rudolf Matz’s Theme & Variations and Reena Esmail’s Varsha, both also on my YouTube channel. I am very proud of these recordings and so grateful to live a life full of music, study, and community. Thank you for listening.

Join us this Sunday, August 10 at 3PM for a FREE fun-filled and family-friendly afternoon of French music. Bring your families and friends to enjoy a special afternoon of Chamber Music! Hosted by the Columbus Metropolitan Library Hilliard Branch

Today I submitted my arrangement of Julius Eastman’s Joy Boy for string quartet to Music Sales Corporation and the Eastman Music Publishing Company. It was such an honor to study Eastman’s 1974 manuscript and prepare scores for - as far as I know - the first ever string quartet arrangement of Julius Eastman’s music. I am hopeful that the publishers will see the love, research, and dedication that went into this arrangement and choose to publish it. If they do, my arrangement of Joy Boy for string quartet will be available via ClassicalOnDemand dot com. Eastman’s main performance instruction is to “create ticker tape music” without any explanation as to what that means or further instruction for how to do it. My arrangement maintains the simplicity of writing and gently guides the improvisatory elements though the use of graphic notation. The graphic flows alongside the staff lines, increasing and decreasing in density and line weight. Players use the graphic to inform their approach to musical energy, intensity, tone, loudness, and busyness in creating their ticker tape sounds. Rather than prescribe exactly how things must be played, my arrangement helps an ensemble generate their own interpretation and rendition. It’s not yet confirmed whether MSC and EMPC will publish my arrangement, and I’m contractually not allowed to earn any money from sales of the score. But I am so proud of this work and I just wanted to share with you where we are in this process. My hope is that my arrangement makes Julius Eastman’s music and legacy more accessible to more musicians.

Love Songs for Dogs 💖 by Sweet Teeth Stew and I recorded an album of songs inspired by the 13 years of radiant sunshine that Swiper brought into our lives. These are covers of songs that brought us some comfort and helped us process the grief. Recording them together gave us a container for our tears a shared language for understanding the life that Swiper lived and the emptiness he left behind. I am hugely proud of this work, and I owe a great debt of gratitude to the countless friends who continue to support me and Stew in this heavy time. Every time I listen to these songs, the grief feels immediate and raw. It reminds me I am still grieving. I am thankful for that too, for the power of music to unleash memories and feelings as if they are still happening. It is wonderful and devastating to be alive, to love, to lose. Enjoy Love Songs for Dogs at sweet-teeth .bandcamp .com, and soon on all streaming platforms. Love you all. RIP Swiper January 2, 2012–January 9, 2025