Art Johnson

Art Johnson, recognized for lyrical phrasing on guitar and violin alike, maintains an extensive career that spans numerous musical idioms. He settled in Los Angeles in 1969 and soon joined the Advancement, a newly assembled ensemble that featured vibraphonist Lynn Blessing, both onstage and in the studio. Engagements followed with Willie Bobo, Judee Sill, Paul Horn, Tim Weisberg, Barbra Streisand, and John Klemmer, the final four of whom appear on recordings he made with them. His activities also ventured well outside jazz: he performed eccentric country material with Gas, Food & Lodging, contributed violin, mandolin, and guitar to sessions with Pat Boone, toured with Tim Buckley from 1974 to 1975, worked on film soundtracks and as a studio musician, and collaborated with Lena Horne, O.C. Smith, the San Diego Symphony, and Engelbert Humperdinck. Johnson taught jazz guitar at San Diego State University and issued duo albums with pianist Duane Smith on Mobile Fidelity in 1984 and with pianist Joanne Grauer on ITI in 1989. Leading his own quartet, he recorded the 1997 album Textures for WLW Records and, the next year, Contact, a duo project with bassist Frederique Alarie issued by Fidelio Audio Canada. In 2000 he released Solo Jazz Guitar, produced by Barney Kessel for DP Records Monaco, along with his first two electric-violin albums, Jazz Live and Bar Talk, both recorded in duet with Dwayne Smith for Rhythm Café Records. Three years later he relocated to the Côte d'Azur, where he merged his activities with those of regional musicians and used his guitar in the Cool Club Quartet to produce Django's Echo for DP Records Monaco. Water Records issued his earlier studio sessions with Judee Sill as Dreams Come True in 2005, and he composed the score for Michèle Fiéloux and Jacques Lombard’s film Le Voyage de Sib in 2006. He reunited with Smith for Live at the Baked Potato, released by ITI in 2013. Johnson is also a widely published poet and novelist whose work carries a pronounced metaphysical orientation; his 2014 novel The Devil's Violin weaves a mystery surrounding the disappearance of Paganini’s violin together with a symbolist’s fascination for arcane historical and metaphysical references. That same year he issued the standards collection Blue Sud with Marc Devine, followed in 2015 by the solo album Classical Art, both on ITI. Warrant Music brought out the previously unreleased anthology Undiscovered Art in 2016 and an expanded reissue of Bar Talk the following year. In 2019 he released The Art of Vibes and Violin, which includes contributions from pianist Dwayne Smith and guitarist Randy Tressler.