Christian Johannes [he/him] is an Amsterdam-based Dutch/Surinamese composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist born in 2002 in Zaandam. He mainly works in electro-acoustic formats, and is deeply involved with folk, glitch and environmental sound, and synthesising these aesthetics.
Johannes is interested in the intersection between the organic and the digital. Through field recording, sampling and synthesis, he works to sculpt sonic environments: places in which music may transpire. He creates sounding ecosystems, where the archaic and the post-modern find fields on which they can talk to each other in strange tongues, asking: “what does it mean to be truly free?”
Johannes is currently working on his debut album glitch_folk:a.manifesto: a series of electroacoustic works around the decomposition of folk music, processing existing musical materials through various techniques of digital decay, placing traditional tunes in highly electronic contexts. Here, the act of glitching is rediscovered, not as a destructive or aggressive practice, but rather as a practice of liberation: of allowing deeply studied, intimate musics to dissolve gracefully into the digital realm; to let them die a peaceful death. In this way, glitch is a strategy of liberating and humanising the machine as well as these musics: to find their shortcomings, quirks and failures, and to treat them with grace, compassion and beauty.
Johannes is a frequent and joyous collaborator in musical and multi-disciplinary situations, regularly working in dance and theatre projects. He plays electronics in environmental music collective the||apiary, as well as keys in the upstart Utrecht-based folk band Aldus Vanya. His music has been featured in dance performances, theatre and art installations in the Netherlands and internationally. His music has been performed in the Muziekgebouw, the Concertgebouw and the Van Gogh Museum.
He is currently studying cultural musicology at the University of Amsterdam and composition at the Conservatory of Amsterdam with Maya Verlaak, Jorrit Tamminga and previously Wim Henderickx.