ABOUT THE ARTIST
Graeme Steele Johnson, clarinet
Praised for his “elegant and rounded sound” and “effortless, unmatched” technique, Graeme Steele Johnson is a versatile and imaginative clarinetist whose work bridges solo performance, chamber music, and innovative artistic projects. His career includes original initiatives such as a TEDx talk linking Mozart and Seinfeld, the reconstruction of a long-lost work by Charles Martin Loeffler, and performances of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Quintet on a custom elongated clarinet. He has appeared at major venues including the Library of Congress, Kennedy Center, Morgan Library, Ravinia, and numerous international festivals. As a concerto soloist, he has performed with orchestras such as the Vienna International Orchestra and the Vermont Mozart Festival Orchestra. Since 2022, Johnson has been the clarinetist of the internationally touring, award-winning quintet WindSync and collaborates widely with leading artists and ensembles. His arrangements of works by Mozart, Debussy, Gershwin, and Messiaen are performed worldwide. A prizewinner of several competitions, he holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, Yale School of Music, and doctoral studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. His Delos recording Forgotten Sounds includes the world-premiere recording of Loeffler’s Octet.
