Recent work by Composer and violinist Amanda Johnson

Amanda Johnson Composer - Recent Music

Inspired by the first people to migrate to the UK over 12,000 years ago. The music was installed at Creswell Crags Museum May-August 2021.

Drawn to The Water's Edge

Violin, Jal Tarang and synthetic sounds created from data collected from a weeping willow tree.

Created for Etruria Industrial Museum's Canal Festivals Trail, 2023, funded by Arts Council England

Weeping Willow

A musical Suite in four movements inspired by the cave lion bones in Buxton Museum, Derbyshire, composed using data from ancient Cave Lion DNA. The music explores the movement, freedom and power of this now extinct animal.
Funded by Arts Council England and supported by Sound and Music via the Francis Chagrin award. The piece uses audio recordings made inside Foxhole cave and around High Wheeldon Hill and the National Trust kindly helped me to record the music in Foxhole Cave in the Peak District.

From a Roar to a Whisper - No 1 - On High Wheeldon

From a Roar to a Whisper - No 2 - The Ice Cave

From a Roar to a Whisper - No 4 - The Hunt

From a Roar to a Whisper -  No 3 - On The Prowl

Lullaby of the Larks is a memorial to the people captured and killed in an Iron Age massacre at Fin Cop in the Peak District. While this historic event happened over 2500 years ago, it has chilling similarities with recent events in the media. Have we learnt nothing in that time? The music, by composer Amanda Johnson is based on the song of the many larks which make the hill their home. 

During recent excavations at the iron-age hill fort of Fin Cop, near Bakewell, archaeologists found the 2500 year-old remains of a woman. Marks on her bones suggested that she had been executed and the way her body was laid suggested that she was thrown into the ditch that surrounded the fort and the fort wall pushed in on top of her. Everywhere the archaeologists dug along the line of the wall they found the remains of women, children and babies who had all suffered a similar fate.
The evidence suggests that in all probability the women and children of Fin Cop were killed in an act of genocide and that as many as 400 of them still lay undiscovered beneath the hill fort’s thin soil. The theory is that the men of Fin Cop were defeated in battle elsewhere and that the victors committed the atrocity. So far, the remains of 16 individuals have been recovered and they are kept at Buxton Museum.

Funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and installed in Buxton Museum, Derbyshire, in 2018, alongside 16 paintings by artist Richard Johnson and some of the remains of the recent excavations of the hill, including a tiny ancient lark bone.

Lullaby of them Larks

Lullaby of the Larks

Created in response to a hand axe in Buxton Museum’s collection, dropped by one of the first migrants to the UK over 350,000 years ago. The music was composed for a dance piece based on the true stories of recent refugees to Derbyshire. The piece was performed in the Peak District National Park, Summer 2019, close to the spot where the axe was found. Funded by Arts Council England, the film is now accessible on Buxton Museum’s digital app. The film can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/344573003

My Sister's Scarf - Section 2 - Fleeing from Danger

My Sister's Scarf - Section 1 - The Epiphany

Created during an artistic residency at Barrow Hill Roundhouse in Derbyshire, a place long associated with travel and the migration of workers. The music references the sounds of the old Iron works as well as trains, both steam powered and modern that still pass through. Funded by Arts Council England and National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Combust

My Sister's Scarf - Section 3 - Infinite Horizons

Music for reflection, which was installed alongside a large piece of visual art , a reflective coal mirror, in the newly renovated private chapel of Wentworth Woodhouse, Rotherham in February 2020. 
The piece allows the audience to contemplate the perceived freedoms of the deer and her calf, the aristocratic family of the house and the miners, who made the building of the stately home possible. The title references a personal memory of a former gamekeeper to the estate of a female deer and her calf walking across a seam of coal in the morning sunlight. The coal had been polished to shine like glass, ahead of a visit by King George and Queen Mary. 
A partnership project between Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust and Rotherham Early Help, funded by Arts Council England and Wentworth and Elsecar Great Place.

Hind Of The Morning

Composer and musician based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK
Finzi Scholarship Award Holder, Francis Chagrin award 2017 
I compose contemporary classical music  for acoustic instruments and/or voices combined with recorded environmental sounds. My work explores themes of migration, travel and identity.

Amanda Johnson Composer - Recent Music

Amanda Johnson (Musician and Composer)