Charles Johnson is a composer and musician residing in Oakland, CA who has worked in improvised music, noise, experimental rock, American Primitive fingerstyle guitar, and music for film and dance. In recent years he has developed a versatile analog electronic performance system, created interactive and intermedia work with unusual interfaces, and worked extensively with just intonation tuning systems – all with an ear towards finding faults and instabilities that might reveal latent beauty.  Recordings of his work have been published by Communion, Amish, Merge, Umbrella, Phaserprone, Squealer and Threelobed.

Johnson has performed with Pauline Oliveros, Peter Kowald, Eugene Chadbourne, James Fei, Frank Gratkowsi, and Miya Masaoka. His work has been premiered at the Transmissions festival (North Carolina and Chicago), Signal+Noise (Vancouver), and by the pulsoptional composers’ ensemble. Johnson has performed at Siren Fest (New York), BENT 2004 (New York), the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento), Music for People and Thingamajigs (San Francisco) and the San Francisco International Film Festival. He has composed music for several feature-length documentaries, including Brett Ingram’s award-winning films Monster Road and Rocaterrania, and Cynthia Hill’s Guestworker. Johnson holds an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College.