biography // values

Between American and European debuts with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Ensemble Intercontemporain in 2019 and 2022, respectively, Maya Miro Johnson (b. 2001)-- a composer, conductor, instrumentalist, and interdisciplinary artist who considers her work experimental philosophy not constrained to logic and reason -- has created works for violin/prerecorded Gaga class (Johnny Gandelsman of Brooklyn Rider and the Silk Road Ensemble); ensemble/shoes/silent film/bartered objects (loadbang); soprano/ensemble/radios (Toby Thatcher's Zeitgeist, finalist in Beth Morrison Projects' 2021 Next Gen Competition and winner of both Schuman and Surinach Prizes in the 2020 BMI Student Composer Awards in a historical first); electroacoustic metainstrument (with Mekhi Gladden & Drew Schlegel); chamber group/game show host (Sarasota Festival); and more...

Her work has also been featured on numerous recent and upcoming albums, including HOCKET's #What2020LooksLike, Johnny Gandelsman's acclaimed This Is America, Inna Faliks' The Master and Margarita Project, Elena Cholakova’s upcoming CD of new piano music by female composers,  and the Minnesota Orchestra's Mahler: Symphony No. 8 with Osmo Vänskä and BIS.

In fall of 2024, Maya will enter the Yale School of Music to pursue a Masters of Music in Composition on the Laitman Scholarship. Previously, Maya spent 5 years earning a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the Curtis Institute of Music, where her primary teachers were Nick DiBerardino, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Amy Beth Kirsten, David Serkin Ludwig, and Steve Mackey. Upon graduation, she received the Charles Miller Prize: Alfredo Casella Award in Composition.

She has also studied privately with Chaya Czernowin at Harvard, with Missy Mazzoli and Kristin Kuster through Luna Composition Lab, and in high school with composer-percussionist-producer Devin Maxwell, her first mentor.  As a conductor, she has received instruction from Vänskä, Marin Alsop, Robert Spano, Lina Gonzalez-Granados, Hugh Wolff, James Ross, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Conner Gray Covington, and Cristian Măcelaru, among others. 

She has served as a cover conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra starting in their 2021/22 season.  Summer studies have included the National Youth Orchestra of the USA, BU Tanglewood Institute, soundSCAPE Composition and Performance Exchange, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Fresh Inc. Festival, Miguel Harth-Bedoya's Conducting Institute, Bergen International Festival, & Aspen Music Festival and School's American Conducting Academy as its youngest female fellow ever. In 2023, she was a Copland House CULTIVATE fellow and worked with scientist Sriharsha Bhat at the Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm as part of its inaugural Science Lab, directed by Elisabet Ljungar.

Recent work includes bruises; yellow, green, and purple, a concerto for Spirio | r player piano, video, and orchestra; in the valley of the shadow for the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra; Strange Father! for Xavier University Choir (as part of the Cincinnati May Festival in partnership with the Cincinnati Symphony); White Coat Syndrome for Mexican percussionist Diego Alfonso Jiménez; and a short experimental opera film as a study for a larger work titled Patience with Norwegian/Swedish soprano Christina Herresthal. In February of 2024, Dance Suite had its premiere by Johnny Gandelsman at Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for Performing Arts. This year, she will also premiere a new violin concerto for Emma Meinrenken, a audience-participation work for the Penn Memory Center with Micah Gleason and Isza Wu, a site-specific commission on the Colorado River for the Moab Music Festival, a Yiddish art song in response to Schubert for Evan Gray, and a short ballet for the Rock School of Dance, choreographed by Robert Weiss. Maya is slated to be a Composition Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in summer of 2024, studying with Osvaldo Golijov, George Lewis, Tania León, Steven Mackey, Joan Tower, and Michael Gandolfi.

She formed the performance art duo ~ [pronounced two] with Sarrah Bushara in 2020 and is published in the BabelScores Catalog, an online library based in Paris. Her favorite song is Rock’n’Roll Suicide by David Bowie, and in her pain-free spare time she studies Gaga, a movement language by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin.

Symbols she uses to represent her identity are the sunflower, the zebra, the bee, the שׂ, and any shade of purple.

~~~

Main Research Interests:

  • cyborgization

    • the construction and use of electroacoustic metainstruments

    • AI and the new futurism; grappling with apocalypse culture

    • (dis)ability and technology within humanity

  • embodiment and (body)(politics)

    • diverse experiences of alienation & viscerality in the human body projected onto societal bodies

    • Gaga movement language applications to instrumental playing

    • female/femme rage, pain, and bodily trauma

    • hereditary ghosts and epigenetic storytelling

  • interdisciplinary craft

    • expanding the tradition of composed theater and building on the performance art lineage of Fluxus

    • developing an artistic interlingua for collaborating and collating disciplines

    • developing a social networking platform for artists and scientists/researchers with similar interests to cross-pollinate whom they can reach with their work

    • auteurism and the intersection of the experimental with the populist