Chair
Profile: Bryan Johanson

Bryan Johanson
Department Chair
Professor of Music
Office: LH 231D
Phone: 503.725.3011
Fax: 503.725.8215
E-mail: johansonb@pdx.edu
Award-winning
composer Bryan Johanson takes inspiration from sources as varied as
poets Sappho and Samuel Beckett, medieval physiology, ancient Roman
history, and the grain of his personal experience. A native of
Portland, Oregon, Johanson is an artist rooted in the Pacific Northwest
and intent on communicating the textures of Oregon in his music.
Performed,
recorded and published nationally and internationally, Johanson's work
has won major awards from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Aspen
Music Festival, The Kennedy Center, UCLA and the Esztergom
International Guitar Festival. Johanson studied composition with
Charles Jones and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom.
Johanson's catalogue of over eighty compositions features three
symphonies, concertos for violin, cello and piano, numerous chamber
works, song cycles and choral works, as well as compositions for solo
instruments. In recent years he has focused a major portion of his
creative energy on writing chamber music that includes guitar.
A
prominent guitarist and recording artist, Johanson studied with Alirio
Diaz, Christopher Parkening and Michael Lorimer. He has performed with
orchestras, chamber music groups, choirs, and in solo recitals
throughout the United States and Canada.
Johanson is a Professor
of Music at Portland State University, where he founded PSU's
successful guitar studies program and the Guitar Recital Series in
1978, and is the chair of the music department. In 1991 he established
the popular Portland Guitar Festival, which he organizes annually.
Johanson lives in Portland with his wife Victoria and their daughter Molly.