- [Narrator] In partnership with the Curtis Institute of Music, WHYY presents the following program.

(intense dramatic music) - "Life After Death," the piece is a graphic score, so that means that it's not notated with standard ledger lines, and staff, and, you know, all the curly Q's that people associate with notated music.

And instead it's more about the idea of visual art itself, projecting ideas of what it could sound like.

(intense dramatic music) What interested me with this piece was actually an article that came out.

They had found phosphine elements in the cloud decks of Venus.

They were researching the possibility of some sort of microbial life form on another planet in our solar system, and I just immediately thought of David Bowie.

"Life on Mars" is a kind of a very important song to me.

(intense dramatic music) And so what I did with this piece, is I transcribed the Bowie song, and then I kind of cut it up into a collage, and used those pitches as like a frame, basically, and then for the musical quote unquote material in the center of the frame, I used the spectrograms from the research article, which are really beautiful, just from a visual perspective, like there's beautiful red, and blue, and green lines that form these geometrical structures.

I got to work with the wonderful Marcus Lang, who is just a phenomenal bassist.

(intense dramatic music) My name is Maya Miro Johnson.

I'm a composer, conductor, violinist, and interdisciplinary artist.

I have a lot of very creatively minded people in my family, so it seemed quite natural that I would have some sort of artistic inclination.

When I was really small, every morning I would get up and draw for hours.

My parents thought I was interested in visual art, and then as I got older, I think it became apparent that I was interested in language, and theater, and actually music was almost on the last of the list, in that I enjoyed it, and my parents exposed me to it.

My grandfather was a violinist, so he sent me one of his, you know, quarter size instruments when I was maybe five or so, and I had Suzuki lessons.

I was very lucky that I had, you know, parents who emphasized the, I guess, disciplinary, you know, element of learning an instrument, as well as the creative part, and I was always really attracted to orchestra music, even though I'd never felt capable of playing at that level.

Eventually when I kind of started making these connections between movement and conducting, I realized that I really did want to find a home in the orchestra, so I decided to really double down, and I started practicing very seriously, and I got a new teacher who was an alumni, or alumnus of Curtis, and really wonderful musician, and she really whipped me into shape.

I kind of fell into the dance world specifically.

I was really interested in movements and rhetoric, and how those two things kind of coalesce or coordinate.

And then when I was, I think, 14 and 15, that is a time where you do have to start making decisions about your seriousness about it, so I had some really bad injuries in my feet, and while I was kind of laid up with these, with these foot injuries, I really started to make the connection between music and movement, and specifically conducting, and kind of things kind of tumbled into place from there.

I was training for modern and contemporary dance.

I also trained in tap dance, which is something that you couldn't find in my work.

(stomping) (orchestra and tap dancing) I really had no idea what conducting is.

I really just was attracted to the idea of like controlling the sound with my hands, and engaging with it physically, and also just the communal aspect.

At that point I really didn't even read music very well, so I decided that I would go to the library, and check out some scores, and bring them to Utah Symphony concerts.

I was introduced to Rei Hotoda, who is the former Associate Conductor, and I started taking some lessons kind of infrequently with her.

(orchestral music) The first year I joined the youth orchestra was the first year they did a young composers project.

At that point I really was serious about all three musical art forms, and taking lessons, and doing my own study.

It's one of those art forms that is very forgiving in that the more life experience you have, and the more education you have I think, honestly, the better prepared you are to create really great music.

Right now I'm playing a piece by Ben Patterson, who is a really important Fluxus composer, African-American Fluxus composer from the 1960s, and this piece is called "Paper Piece."

I think you can probably guess what it entails.

Anyway, I just, I finished making the parts today, so.

In general, I am very much oriented around concepts, or essence, or you might call it gestalts.

Shape, color.

I think the first thing I do is I generally brainstorm in English, and I root around all of the words, because I am very verbally oriented.

I often like to have a big desk, so like, or just the floor, or any kind of workspace, a whiteboard, or something, and I will kind of put out, like, either if it's on a whiteboard I'll just draw a lot, or if it's on a piece of paper on the ground or the wall, I like having basically reorderable parts.

So I can ask myself, I feel like this is the beginning, and I feel like it's the end, but why is that?

You know, like what if this happened, or this happened, or this happened, or this happened?

That's part of the process that I enjoy the most, because it's really visceral, it's really physical.

You know, you feel like you're actually moving things in space and time.

"The Negation of Art" was actually the first piece that I wrote, just to write a piece, in a very long time.

Basically the concept with this piece is, it's actually very abstract.

It's very pitch oriented, and, the four different movements with their kind of interstitial tissue, kind of blossomed from exercises with pitch, basically, and writing.

It's basically a canon of sorts, where both lines have the same intervals, the piano and the violin, but they have them in different orders, and starting on different pitches, so that they're always chasing each other.

Basically they're in this dance or in this dialogue.

(orchestral music) So Makai's a really good friend of mine, and we were talking about doing a piece.

So together we started with the ideas of the body politic, and the body politic being ill, or having maladies.

I really wanted it to be a duet for oboe and the video.

(oboe and piano playing) (phone ringing) (oboe and piano playing) (shushing) (oboe and piano playing) (shushing and piano playing) (oboe playing and phone ringing) (tap dancing) (tap dancing and oboe playing) (oboe and piano playing) (phone ringing) (oboe playing) (oboe playing and stomping) (oboe playing and dramatic sounds) (oboe playing and phone ringing) (piano and oboe playing) (phone ringing and piano playing) - Are you there?

- Back?

Back.

Go back now.

But where did I come from?

(dramatic sounds) Visible.

I'll go.

(orchestral and operatic music)