Wesley Johnson

Wesley Johnson most recently completed a masters program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in Music Composition in May of 2007. He received a BS in Music Theory/Composition from William Jewell in 2002. Wesley grew up in Japan and graduated from high school at Canadian Academy in Kobe in 1998. In October 2006 his work was performed at the Electronic Music Midwest festival in Joliet, Illinois. The topic of Wesley's master's thesis is the first half of American-style musical, which he will complete in July. "My music has hints of modernism, bluegrass, neo-classicism, Asian influences, jazz, chance music, and rock. In recent years I discovered humor provids limitless inspiration in my compositional style, as humor is simply a large part of my life. Joseph, my roommate stirred up inspiration to write "Tuba Joe" about a tuba player detective consisting of film noir allusions. My theatrical background plays a large part of my writing. My piece "Murphy's Law" choreographs several things going wrong (on purpose, of course) among the instrumentalists, as well as their departure (they give up because the music is too difficult - again, on purpose). Currently, I am synthesizing nearly all my interests: I am writing a science-fiction musical comedy. In answer to the question of whether I can take things seriously: I composed the piece "Beneath the Serenity." Beneath all my humorous and silly exterior there is a shaky past, and in this case, it is literal. I experienced a major earthquake while living in Japan as a teenager, and in my music attempted to capture the intensity and chaos I felt during those following days/weeks/years."