Player Portrait

Jeffrey Johnson

Bass

First season with the Oregon Symphony:

1992-1993

Most influential teacher(s):

My high school orchestra director, Harold Horbig, gave us the sense that we were engaged in an endeavor that was fundamentally important. He did this without subjecting us to windy and verbose discourses on the nature of the importance.

Earliest musical memory:

Banging pots and pans together as accompaniment to Sousa marches my parents would play on the phonograph.

"I first knew I would make music my career when ... "

It was time to declare a major in college and there wasn’t anything else I seemed to be able to do with any degree of proficiency.

"Other than performing music, I've always thought it might be fun to be a ... "

Political cartoonist. You can influence public opinion with a few strokes of the pen. Unfortunately, I can’t draw.

Favorite composer and/or period?

This is constantly changing. This month it’s Schubert and that “gray area” between the Classical and Romantic periods, roughly 1800-1830. So much of the music from this period is wonderfully impossible to categorize.

What does this photograph say about your life?

It combines two things that are central to my life: my family and music.

What do you enjoy most about performing?

Becoming immersed in the style and modes of thought of other historical periods and making it possible for audiences to do likewise.

Other than playing great music, what do you see as the Symphony's most important role?

Education.

What is your favorite part of being a member of the Oregon Symphony?

Living in Portland. Symphonic music is, of necessity, a metropolitan art form, which requires of its practitioners that they reside in metropolitan areas. I think Portland has many of the advantages of a city and few of the disadvantages.

Player Portrait