Liz Dilnot Johnson Recordings

Liz Johnson began her career as a full-time class teacher in South London and in Birmingham but after ten years decided to take a year of unpaid leave to study for her MA in composition at Birmingham Conservatoire. She then completed her PhD in Composition with Philip Cashian, who persuaded her not to return to the classroom as she had originally planned. Johnson’s music received immediate attention and has been performed all over the UK, and beyond, by eminent performers and ensembles. These include the Brodsky Quartet, Roderick Williams, The Opera Group – Covent Garden, Flotilla, the Goldberg Ensemble, Andrew West, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Kyle Horch and Ex Cathedra.

Johnson’s chamber works have won a number of prizes and awards including the Birmingham Chamber Music Society Composition Prize 2001 for Quartet No 1 Images of Trees, the Almira Quartet Composition Prize for Quartet No 2 For Elliott and the International Alliance of Women Musicians’ Search for New Music 2016 Gideon Prize for Quartet No. 4 Sky-burial. Larger-scale works have also received critical acclaim: de l’herbe qui s’éveille (2001) for string orchestra having ‘a refreshing quality, evocative in subtle tonal and textural colours’ (Independent); ‘sometimes naturalistic, sometimes ethereal, the delicacy both dark and subtly disturbing’ (Birmingham Post); ‘an essay in string sonoristics… a beautifully crafted miniature.’ (Guardian).

Moon Incantations, composed for Bournville Young Singers as part of the Adopt-a-Composer scheme, was finalist in the British Composer Awards. Johnson’s newly commissioned Requiem first performed in April 2017, Colwall’s Requiem for Aleppo,involves a wide range of amateur singers and young performers alongside a professional violist, taking inspiration both from the original Latin Requiem plainchant and from solo instrumental music from the Syrian region. Johnson is about to embark on a large-scale project with the choir Ex Cathedra, creating new music for period instruments in the same combinations as used by J. S. Bach in his cantatas.