Spring Garden Music

April 2008

TRUANT RUNTS

Jack Wright & Michael Johnsen

MICHAEL JOHNSEN was born in 1968 to two German immigrants in Pittsburgh, where he continues to live. Over the past several years he has wired together an melange of analog electronic devices for live performance, whose highly idiosyncratic behaviors are revealed through their complex interactions. As an antidote to all that wire, he is equally devoted to the saw, a simple folk instrument. He is especially fond of putting himself in difficult, confusing situations. Most of what he might have learned has come from the so-called natural world, like watching robins run. "My favorite sound is the one that's over."

He has played widely in the eastern US in improvising, electronics, and "noise" contexts, including three Hi Zero Festivals in Baltimore, two No Net weekends in Philadelphia, Avant-tronics (Ohio), and Sonic Transmutations (Rhode Island, 2004). Recent and important partners have included Michel Doneda, Margaret Cox, Michael Zerang, Joe McPhee, Tom Djll, and Greg Pierce.

Michael has toured in Europe and the US with Jack Wright, and at times also French trumpeter Sebastian Cirotteau, under "the name "Truant Runts". Together they have created a CD on the Sprout label by that name. From Italian reviewer Massimo Ricci:

A duo like the one of Wright and Johnsen, who run the whole distance between the "omission" of a censored speech and the raspy outcome of repeated heated exchanges, is just what my fussy persona needs when everything in improvisation seems to be already said and done. Saxophones, electronics and saw are the means for a music that's the equivalent of a blasphemous cycle of electrotherapeutics, up there with crazed mementos of human imperfection camouflaged as raggedy rustles and photophobic handouts. Wright's re-engineering of reed techniques turns the snugness of "easy" listening topsy-turvy, insulating intelligence from mass-produced boredom. Johnsen's unbelievable control of saw and electronics' vocal qualities makes a lot of sense in this unembarassed context of plucky affirmations of independence from any predetermined canon. If these guys are "truant runts", then most jazz players are mental midgets."

Michael has also released a cd on Recorded, drawn from his Hi Zero performances in 2003: "Patience Tryouts".