Evan Johnson (b. 1980) is a young American composer whose music focuses on the physical and bodily underpinnings of instrumental performance, the ontology of time and proportion, and the dramatic limitation of instrumental means and musical material.  He received his Ph.D. in composition from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he studied with David Felder as a Presidential Fellow; other teachers include Johannes Schöllhorn, Chaya Czernowin, Richard Barrett and Brian Ferneyhough.  A summa cum laude graduate from Yale University in 2002, Johnson has been invited to numerous composition seminars and festivals in the USA, Canada and Europe.

Johnson received a 2006 Joseph H. Bearns Prize from Columbia University. Other awards include those from ASCAP (2008 Morton Gould Young Composers' Award), the Ensemblia Festival (Shortlist 2007), the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts (2007 Fellow), Society for New Music (2003 Brian M. Israel Prize), the New York Art Ensemble (Young Composers’ Competition 2001), Broadcast Music, Inc. (a 2000 BMI Student Composer Award and Carlos Surinach Prize), the Washington Conservatory of Music (the 1997 Sotireos Vlahopoulos Young Composer’s Prize), and Yale University (the Joseph Lentilhon Selden Memorial Award, in connection with which his music was described as “intellectually, technically, and emotionally rich and assured,” the Abraham Beekman Cox Prize, and the Friends of Music Prize for his orchestral work Horizontals White over Dark). 

His music has been performed throughout North America, Europe and beyond by musicians such as Ensemble SurPlus; the Nouvel Ensemble Modern; EXAUDI; 175 East; the Cantus Ensemble; the Society for New Music; pianists Ian Pace, Sebastian Berweck and Geoffrey Burleson; clarinetist Gareth Davis; violinist Mark Menzies; the Quatuor Bozzini; the New York Miniaturist Ensemble; and soloists from the National Symphony Orchestra, among others.  Current projects include a work for trumpet and trombone (for ELISION) and a 45-minute concerto for bass (doubling contrabass) clarinet and ensemble (for Gareth Davis). Also active as a writer on music, Johnson has contributed to Tempo, Contemporary Music Review, GroveMusic Online (forthcoming), Music Theory Spectrum (forthcoming), and NewMusicBox, and he will provide the booklet essay for upcoming releases of Peter Ablinger’s 33-127 on Mode Records and of Boulez and Stockhausen on Stradivarius Records.

He is currently a postdoctoral teaching associate in music theory and composition at Northeastern University, in Boston.