Clarinetist Graeme Johnson is YTA’s 2014 Silver Medalist in the Winds, Brass, Percussion, Harp, and Guitar Division.
Ten years after competing with YTA, Johnson’s album release, Forgotten Sounds, and his tour to promote it garnered national news coverage.
In late 2024, Johnson spoke with us about his career and his memories of competing with YTA.
It’s been more than a decade since you competed with YTA. Could you tell us how your experience with YTA impacted you?
I was very young at the time, a junior in college, so it was really my first competition. I remember going there with a lot of older people from school. It was formative in that way, seeing what it’s like to compete at a high level outside of a school setting with cash prizes and an audience. It was a foretaste of, not just competitions, but playing concerts in the real world.
What have you been up to since then?
I’m a career chamber musician. I live in New York now, and I tour a lot of the year with my quintet, WindSync. We’re on the road about 100 days a year. But I also do all sorts of other chamber music and my own projects outside with strings or piano. I play all over the country and abroad.
I released an album in June, Forgotten Sounds. It’s the world premiere recording of a forgotten octet by Charles Martin Loeffler. He was the most performed American composer of his time. This piece is a big, 30-minute octet that was performed in 1897 but was never published, recorded, or heard again for the next 127 years. So I discovered it and then spent a year reconstructing the score. I made the first recording and have been touring it starting in spring of 2024. We’ve played at the Library of Congress, The Morgan Library in New York, Phoenix Chamber Music Festival, The Stissing Center in upstate New York, and then we brought it home to Boston, where it was heard 127 years ago, and we played at the Harvard Musical Association.
The Washington Post did a full-page spread about it; it’s gotten a lot of press.
(After Johnson’s interview with YTA, The New York Times listed Forgotten Sounds as one of the best classical albums of 2024.)
This (2024) was definitely a memorable year between the release of this recording and the live performance of it. The historical milestone of bringing this piece back to life is noteworthy. On a personal level, it meant a lot because it synthesized a lot of different things I do and different interests of mine. It’s not just that I was playing clarinet but, the academic angle: I uncovered this piece and then reconstructed the score. I also do a lot of arranging, and some of these concepts included my arrangements. And then I had to learn a lot about the recording industry, making this recording, pitching to record labels, and ultimately signing a deal with my label, Delos (now owned by Outhere Music). We now have an exclusive relationship. Learning the ins and outs of the recording industry has been an exciting journey for me.
What are your goals from here?
This has been so consuming for the last four years, basically, and I’m just sort of emerging from it. I will continue to perform, but I finally have some room to kind of think about what I want to do next, which is both daunting and inspiring. What I enjoyed about this project was it engaged so many kinds of faculties for creative communication, whether I was pitching to a label or a presenter or kind of speaking from the stage about resonances between the different repertoire or what meaning of playing new old music is. That was really energizing for me.
Just the creative and curatorial angle of putting together an album, how pieces fit together and tell a story. So I think I would love to just do more of that curation moving forward whether that’s for my next album or touring programs I’m putting together for my content.
My quintet presents a music festival in Houston called Onstage Offstage Chamber Music Festival, and I’m going to be serving as the artistic director starting in 2026. That’s another opportunity for fashioning programs and players. I’m interested in the kind of stories that music can tell in that way and the chemistry of selecting personnel and all of that.
What do you enjoy doing for fun when you’re not working? Do you have any hobbies or interests you’d like to talk about?
I love playing tennis, and luckily, a lot of music festivals in the summer get me out of New York where I have easier access to tennis courts.
Would you say your taste in music changed at all over the years? How?
I’m sure it has. I feel I become more musically omnivorous every day. The ear collects more sounds over time that activate sympathetic resonances among each other. The more I learn about music, the more music I love. My wife has introduced me to a lot of her favorite music, and I work with composers, and then I learn about their music.
What advice would you offer to musicians who are in the same place you were when you competed with YTA, musicians who are just starting their careers?
Be open to a rich array of musical experiences. There’s a misguided kind of horse blinders strategy that is actually encouraged in music school that your job is to practice and nothing else. Or your job is to do orchestra excerpts and nothing else, because that’s how you’re going to get your orchestra job, and that’s how you’re going to pay your bills.
For some, it does work that way, and, hopefully, they live happy lives. But a lot of the time, people are sort of fed this idea that there’s one way in music, and they don’t take the time to stop and think if that’s what they actually want. Then they get there and think, Is that it? Now what?
I think anyone who is saying there’s only one way to do things, that’s more a reflection of their own narrow mindedness rather than the actual state of the world. If there’s a will, there’s a way: It’s kind of cheesy, but I think that’s true. People, especially at a young age, should stay open and not resign themselves to one path or another before they really find out what they love.
Another thing is, someone told me in my freshman music theory class, “Look around you. These people are going to be your colleagues in the industry so make sure you’re nice to everyone.” I thought it was an exaggeration to make a point, but it was not. Everyone I went to school with are the people hiring me today. It’s amazing, and it’s also dangerous if you’re not nice, because then you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot for later work. By contrast, if you’re a nice person, a good colleague, and you do good work, show up prepared, then people remember that.