LUCIEN JOHNSON

Lucien Johnson is a saxophonist and composer from Wellington, New Zealand. He has spent much of the last decade travelling and performing in far flung places such as Europe, India, Tanzania and Haiti. Based until recently in Paris he played with many leading figures on the world jazz stage: Marylin Crispell, Alan Silva, Mario Canonge, Greg Malcolm, John Betsch, Damo Suzuki,
Lol Coxhill and Itaru Oki, amongst others. He has also worked extensively as a composer for theatre, film, and dance productions.

Johnson‘s musical repertoire has the spontaneity and freedom of jazz at its heart, but the geographical and stylistic influences that have formed his experience fuse and collide: from afrobeat through film noir sountracks to intoxicated circus marches and voodoo rhythms.

Lucien is going for a musical residency in Minas Gerais, Brazil. There he is going to play for thousand of people as an attraction
of the Savassi Jazz Festival. Johnson will be working with local musicians on a selection of his favourite melodies, original compositions and pieces he has learnt on his travels, such as his arrangements of traditional Haitian folk songs.

Back in New Zealand, Lucien will show in live Brazil the impressions that his Brazilian experience brought to his music.