hyphen for crotales [2002]

Apostrophe 1 (All communication is a form of complaint) for two bass clarinets [2008]

clutch for violin [2005]

Colophons (“That other that ich not whenne”), reflecting pool / monument for six voices and violin [2006]

Positioning in Radiography for three toy pianos [2007]

“Evan Johnson composes music that shimmers in a remarkably productive manner between indistinctness and precision. His scores, worked out with extravagant exactitude of detail, would turn Brian Ferneyhough pale with envy and yet radiate an astonishing lightness.”

— Dirk Wieschollek, neue musikzeitung

“Evan Johnson has been among the most interesting and gifted composers of his generation. That this is the first monograph CD of his music is remarkable only for having taken so long to come about, especially given the fact that these five pieces are, at the time of this writing, already between 12 and 18 years old – we might call them early works. […] Johnson’s music stages an endlessly intriguing interference between soundscape and discourse, with extremely compelling results: to listen abstractly is pleasant, the minutes pass effortlessly, while to listen with focus is to feel an intense existential weight and one must stop to catch one’s breath and come to terms after each piece.”

— Alex Huddleston, Tempo

“Music by Evan Johnson has appeared on records put out by soloists and ensembles here and there, and he makes a generous quantity available on SoundCloud, but now we have a portrait disc tracing the faint but distinct and certainly very intent tracks he places against time. But which time? The definition of indefiniteness, the certainty in uncertainty – these are of our age. Half-present modal shadows and canonic interplay, however, suggest instruments and voices mumbling from the Middle Ages.”

— Paul Griffiths

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