PRESS
PERFORMANCES
♫🎸San Francisco State University ♫🎸 Seattle Space Needle Concerts ♫🎸 Idaho State University Program Board ♫🎸 Old First Center for the Arts — San Francisco ♫🎸 Boise State University ♫🎸 Village Early Music Society ♫🎸University of San Francisco Concerts ♫🎸Tahoe Historical Society ♫🎸 California Cultural Center - San Francisco ♫🎸Hospice of the Foothills ♫🎸 Sierra Musical Arts Association ♫🎸 Music in the Mountains ♫🎸 Nevada County Historical Society ♫🎸 Nevada County Artist’s Guild ♫🎸 California Litman Series ♫🎸 South Lake Tahoe Community College ♫🎸 Twin Cities Concert Association ♫🎸 Classical Guitar Society of Portland ♫🎸 San Francisco Classical Guitar Society ♫🎸 Julia Davis Gallery Concerts - Boise ♫🎸 San Luis, Argentina ♫🎸 Guitar Extravaganza Concerts ♫🎸 Soroptomist International ♫🎸 City College of San Francisco ♫🎸 Tahoe Preservation Society ♫🎸 St. Joseph’s Cultural Center Concerts ♫🎸 KVMR – FM Featured Artist Series ♫🎸 Humboldt State University Concert Series ♫🎸 Borders, Books & Music Artists Series ♫🎸San Francisco Conservatory of Music ♫🎸 Old Town Eureka Concert Series ♫🎸 Quito — Ecuador — Exchange Series ♫🎸 Evergreen College - Olympia, WA ♫🎸 Sons of Norway - San Diego - Minneapolis ♫🎸 Monterey Bay Aquarium ♫🎸 Santiago, Chile ♫🎸 InConcert Sierra ♫🎸 Sacramento State University ♫🎸 Banff School of Fine Arts - Canada ♫🎸 Orchestre Panache - Chamber Orchestra ♫🎸 Sacramento Guitar Society ♫🎸 Buenos Aires, Argentina ♫🎸 Nevada County Composer's Cooperative ♫🎸 Bach's Lunch Concert Series ♫🎸 Sierra Nevada Guitar Festival ♫🎸 Guitar Foundation of America San Francisco ♫🎸 Manitou Springs Colorado ♫🎸 Chamber Music Festival ~ Folsom Prison
EDUCATION
LVJ was the first guitarist to graduate from the Idaho State University School of Fine Arts Music Department. He later became a faculty member and founded the study of Classical Guitar as a standard curriculum at the University in Pocatello, Idaho.
Blackfoot High School, Blackfoot, Idaho.
Idaho State University, Bachelor of Arts Journalism.
Idaho State University, Bachelor of Music Guitar Performance.
San Francisco State University, Master of Arts Guitar Performance, Honors Graduate.
In the following years, while continuing in music, LVJ founded a company and began a career as an Insurance Executive for over 20 years. This business activity earned him the title from fellow musicians as “The Charles Ives of the Guitar” while composing, concertizing, and continually slaying dragons to feed to the hungry bulldog that eats money, creates bills and raises financial overhead for all of us every month.....
A Vietnam Veteran of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division, LVJ served in the 502nd Infantry (Rifleman) and the 321st Artillery Battalion, 105 mm Howitzers receiving an Honorable Discharge.
LVJ and Conductor Kent Nagano were honored together by San Francisco State University as “Distinguished Alumni.”
MASTER CLASS STUDIES
Narciso Yepes – San Francisco State University.
Christopher Parkening – The Sun Valley, Idaho Center for the Arts.
Able Carlevaro – San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Julian Bream – San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Alirio Diaz – The Banff School of Fine Arts, Alberta, Canada.
THE AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
" Guitarist Louis Valentine Johnson ...has a number of recordings with original work and arrangements for solo guitar. This recording with the Dos Almas String Quartet is my favorite of them all, with some of his best playing. In 'Toccata, Evocation, & Fandango' by Mark A. Radice, a music professor at Ithaca College, Johnson's guitar has an excellent recorded sound and is well-balanced with the quartet. In the opening movement, Radice's writing demands much of the instrument and a challenging degree of ensemble playing. 'Fandango' often includes the guitar as an active leader in the music and brings the piece to a strong conclusion....The high point of this recording is Johnson's 'Peace Concerto,' written originally as a solo work in tribute to his late son, and arranged here for the ensemble by Cullan Bryant. Johnson's playing is full of feeling, and this is the best I have heard him play on any of his recordings. The ensemble builds to a strong, passionate ending to this deeply felt piece..Its strength lies in the down-to-earth emotional connection that the players have to the meaning of the music.
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A CLASSICAL MODERN MUSIC REVIEW:
“PEACE” Guitar & String Quartet CD
Grego Applegate Edwards
New Consonances for Guitar & String Quartet.
Classical guitarist Louis Valentine Johnson teams up with the Dos Almas String Quartet for Peace (Dos Almas DA 2019), a collection of some timeless music mostly contemporary yet in the tradition of the Spanish guitar legacy. Three works get idiomatic, warm treatment--"The Peace Concerto" composed by Johnson, "Toccata, Evocation, & Fandango" by Mark A. Radice (arranged by Philip Rothman) and "Allegretto in B Minor, Opus 35, Number 22" by Fernando Sor (arranged by Johnson & Craig E. Palmer). The program opener "Toccata, Evocation & Fandango" by Mark A Radice has a complementary Spanish-Neo-Classical meditative air to it that the Fandango conclusion stirs up with a spirit that paints the guitar in the center of an expressive flourish that the quartet seconds nicely.
Johnson's own "Peace Concerto" has a post-Aranquez beauty in its middle "Song of Peace" and elaborate interactions on the closing movement "The Question." The opening "Portraits" has a rugged thematic character. It is all quite pleasing and well worth the ear time....Anyone who revels in the classical guitar will find in this program much to like, I think. The "Peace Concerto" will likely stay in your mind as the central linchpin, but regardless the music and performances hang together as one continually unified stylistic gesture. Johnson and company wax eloquently. In tough times like these, the music helps brighten the mood and we do need that now very much. Kudos.
CLASSICAL GUITAR MAGAZINE
CLASSICAL GUITAR MAGAZINE
"This is a CD That Defies Categorization"
~ Tim Panting
Bustling with sumptuous music invention and spirited playing and well worth checking out. The guitar with a string quartet is a most satisfying musical balancing act, where the guitar can hold its own if the circumstances are right, and here they most certainly are.
All the artists are new to me. Mark A. Radice (Dr.) from the Ithaca College School of Music, New York, has composed a vibrant piece of Baroque proportions which gives Louis Valentine Johnson‘s guitar lots of space to cavort with its bowed companions. The movements flow seamlessly, all the while making sure the guitarist coaxes his instrument with every possible technical flourish imaginable. Johnson’s Peace Concerto (arranged for string quartet by NYC pianist Cullan Bryant), was written in response to a personal tragedy—the death of the composer’s son Alexander, aged 21. In three movements—”Portraits,” “The Song of Peace,” and “The Question”—The Peace Concerto would, I imagine, be a heftily emotional work to perform for the composer/soloist. But also must be uplifting, especially with the supportive gestures of the string quartet. Knowing the inspiration of the piece is obviously enlightening, but to echo a comment from an earlier CG review by Blair Jackson of Johnson’s solo guitar version of the concerto (on an album called 21 Years) even if you didn’t, you’d still find it a work of great solace.
"… rarely recorded works coupled with Louis Valentine Johnson’s great playing …”
Carlos R. Alicea, BMC Records, New York City
CLASSICAL GUITAR MAGAZINE
Album Releases: A DEEPLY MOVING WORK by Louis Valentine Johnson Blair Jackson, Editor in Chief, Classical Guitar Magazine Twenty-One Years Louis Valentine Johnson Dos Almas People respond to personal tragedy in a million different ways. For the prolific American guitarist and composer Louis Valentine Johnson, the death of his son Alexander at the age of 21 several years ago led to Johnson memorializing his beloved child in music: the three-movement, nearly 27-minute Peace Concerto that dominates this CD release (as well as the short Prelude, “Twenty-One Years,” that kicks off the disc). As Johnson writes in the poignant liner notes, “The Peace Concerto embraces memories as Alex grew from from a baby to a little boy to a young man who then had his own son. These compositions encompass as much as music can. the opus includes our love, his struggles, his life Valiantly Running With Fire, playing The Cape, The Road Goes on Forever and the Party Never Ends, Greensleeves, and Tárrega on guitar by the fireplace, plus much more.” And indeed it is multi-layered work that runs a gamut of emotions and musical textures. Johnson has an unerring feel for melody, and he manages to connect the different musical threads he creates quite naturally. The influence of Spanish and Latin American composers comes through in many places, but there are also American folk strains evident and even nods to the Baroque. The middle movement of the Peace Concerto, “Song of Peace,” is particularly affecting. Johnson’s tremendously detailed notes about the Concerto certainly add to emotional heft of the piece, but I think that even if you didn’t know what inspired the work, it would probably move you. It’s quite a journey. The concluding Tres Pensamientos Latinos makes for a pleasing conclusion to the disc; all three “thoughts” are infused with rich Spanish/Latin flavors, from soulful balladry to an exciting improv on classic Spanish tropes. Prelude: Twenty-One Years; The Peace Concerto: Portraits, Song of Peace, The Question; Tres Pensamientos Latinos: Snowfall in El Escorial, Lullaby of Love, Malagueña California! The album can be previewed and purchased through CDBaby, and heard in its entirety on YouTube.
THE IDAHO STATE JOURNAL
Classical blues for a lost son Twenty-One Years By Louis Valentine Johnson Michael Corrigan MA. Louis Valentine Johnson, an Idaho native, composer and founder of the Idaho State University guitar program, has released a CD of guitar music as a tribute to his late son, Alex Johnson, who died at 21 of an accidental opioid overdose. Alex was prescribed pain killers following a car accident. Alex left behind a son. Alex also played folk, blues and classical music. Louis Valentine Johnson’s album is called Twenty-One Years. Since receiving his Masters of Music from San Francisco State, Johnson has developed formidable skill as a classical guitarist. Blair Jackson, editor of Classical Guitar Magazine, reviewed Johnson’s CD: “Johnson has an unerring feel for melody, and he manages to connect the different musical threads he creates quite naturally.” There are many different “musical threads” in Twenty-One Years. The section for Alex includes a “Prelude,” followed by “The Peace Concerto,” a three-movement opus containing: “Portraits,” “Song of Peace” and “The Question.” The CD continues with “Tres Pensamientos Latinos,” three original compositions including a new creative interpretation titled, “Malagueña California!” For “The Question,” Johnson recreates music his son played, combining them to conjure images of a father and deceased son playing ghostly duets. The listener hears a grieving father playing music for the spirit of his son. In eloquent liner notes, Johnson writes, “Here we visit music Alex played on guitar. These works are included so a little boy will know his father’s voice and sound.” It is a strong musical memory piece that is particularly affecting; there is no answer to “The Question.” In music, grief is often expressed with a strong human voice like Eric Clapton’s poignant, “Tears in Heaven,” written for his dead son. Does a classical guitar have too soft a voice to capture the despair a grieving parent feels for a lost child? Johnson’s impassioned playing proves a classical-styled guitar can evoke emotions when played with precision and fury. Johnson writes concerning his intentions: “Execution is one thing, but composing, interpretation, performance and recording of specific life-event emotions are another. “Listeners’ perceptions are vast variables … so, effective composing conveys sentiments of beauty and pain to memorialize a moment in time.” Louis Valentine Johnson has succeeded in musically conveying these heartbreaking sentiments of beauty and pain to memorialize his late son, but grief is still a lingering force. Johnson writes: “I am just now coming to some kind of terms with this after composing, learning and recording the music. … It is a somewhat softer—only slightly softer—pain every day, compared to what it has been for the last seven years or so.” Twenty-One Years, which includes the “Peace Concerto” and "Three Latin Thoughts," is available as an entire CD or as individual tracks to download on CD Baby, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody, Amazon and 200 other online sources/distributors around the world. Louis V. Johnson can be reached at Dos Almas Studios in Grass Valley, California.
By Louis Valentine Johnson
Robert Levoy, US Navy Veteran, Oasis Entertainment Reviews.
Twenty-One Years is the latest album by the innovative acoustic guitarist Louis Valentine Johnson released in 2017.
I found this album totally relaxing and enjoyed this CD from start to finish. My favorite tracks were Portraits, The Question, and Malaguena California!.
With me living with chronic pain, this is the perfect CD for me because music like this relaxes me and in turn lowers my pain level. If you want a CD to help you relax, whether at home or on the road, you need to check out this CD. This album was well written, performed, and recorded. You can purchase this CD at CD Baby and other places where CD’s and digital downloads are sold.
Steve Marsh Classical Guitar Magazine - United Kingdom
Goodbye to Mexico
Louis Valentine Johnson
Dos Almas
This release by Louis Valentine Johnson is a pleasant affair. A large percentage of the tracks have been arranged by Johnson himself.....his performances tender and emotional, with here and there a 'Segovian' sweetness in the slower passages. ....traditional tunes from Mexico, Dia de Campo, and Adios del Soldado are particularly delightful arrangements, immediately conjuring up visions of the 'traditional' sleepy Mexican village one sees in movies - lovely stuff!"
