Phillip Johnston is an American avant-garde jazz

Avant-garde jazz

Avant-garde jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, despite its distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which ...

 composer and saxophonist.

Johnston first gained notice working on the underground music scene of New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in the 1980s. Among those he collaborated with are John Zorn

John Zorn

John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...

, Eugene Chadbourne

Eugene Chadbourne

Eugene Chadbourne is an American improvisor, guitarist and banjoist. Highly eclectic and unconventional, Chadbourne's most formative influence is free jazz. He has also been a reviewer for Allmusic and a contributor to Maximum RocknRoll.Chadbourne started out playing rock and roll guitar, but...

, Elliott Sharp

Elliott Sharp

Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...

, Wayne Horvitz

Wayne Horvitz

Wayne Horvitz is an American composer, keyboardist and record producer.-Biography:Horvitz, a "defiant cross-breeder of genres", has led the groups The President, Pigpen, Zony Mash, and the Four Plus One Ensemble...

, Butch Morris

Butch Morris

Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris is an American jazz cornetist, composer and conductor.-Biography:Before his musical career, Morris served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War....

, and The DB's

The dB's

The dB's are a jangle pop/power pop group who came into prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s. The bandmembers were Peter Holsapple, Chris Stamey, Will Rigby and Gene Holder, all of whom were from Winston-Salem, North Carolina...

. Alongside this, he has done several commissions for theater and dance pieces, and has done film score

Film score

A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...

s for Doris Dorrie

Doris Dörrie

Doris Dörrie is a German film director, producer and author.-Life and work:Dörrie completed her secondary education at a humanist Gymnasium. In 1973 she began a two-year attendance in film studies, in the drama department of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She then studied...

, Philip Haas

Philip Haas

Philip Haas is an American artist and filmmaker. His exhibition of film installations at the Kimbell Art Museum, "Butchers, Dragons, Gods and Skeletons," was listed by TIME magazine as one of the top ten museum shows of 2009 Retrospectives of his art films have been held at the Tate Gallery in...

, and Paul Mazursky

Paul Mazursky

Paul Mazursky is an American film director, screenwriter and actor.-Personal life:He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jean , a piano player for dance classes, and David Mazursky, a laborer. Mazursky was born to a Jewish family; his grandfather was an immigrant from...

. He co-founded The Microscopic Septet

The Microscopic Septet

The Microscopic Septet is a jazz septet, founded in 1980 by saxophonist Phillip Johnston. They played frequently in New York City, toured, and recorded until they disbanded in 1992. In late 2006, when their four albums were re-released along with previously unreleased material as two double CDs,...

, a group which dissolved in 1992, after this he founded the ensemble Big Trouble, who recorded for Black Saint Records. Later in the 1990s he recorded with his own Transparent Quartet.

Discography

• Phillip Johnston's Big Trouble (Black Saint Records, 1992)
• The Unknown (Avant Records
  Avant Records
  Avant Records was a record label based in Japan specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was started by composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1992, as an offshoot of the DIW label...
  
  , 1994)
• Flood at the Ant Farm (Black Saint, 1995)
• Music for Films (Tzadik Records
  Tzadik Records
  Tzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases...
  
  , 1998)
• The Needless Kiss (Koch Records
  Koch Records
  E1 Music , the primary subsidiary of E1 Entertainment LP, is the largest independent record label in the United States. It is also distributed by the Universal Music Group in Europe under the name E1 Universal...
  
  , 1998)
• The Merry Frolics of Satan: The Georges Melies Project (Koch, 1999)
• Normalology (Koch, 2001)
• Rub Me the Wrong Way (Innova, 2004)
• Page of Madness (Asynchronous, 2009)