Tom Johnson is an American composer who migrated from Greenwich Village to Paris. In NY he says he learned a lot with Morton Feldman, especially to listen to music just happening from the notes.

Some call him Minimalist but it must be improper somehow when some pieces reach respectable lengths, and even hint at infinity (Narayana's Cows). He prefers to be considered a Combinatorist, exploring systematically without exceptions or a priori all possible cases of a musical situation. Who else would have written the Catalog of all possible chords between two Cs at octave distance? Unlike many modern composers who pick and choose (sometimes at random, like John Cage) among many available choices, he made a golden rule never to exclude any of the outcomes, leaving the music be without judgement. Mathematically, this means presenting the set of musical objects extensively, by their complete list. One may expect that to be irritating, but the effect on listeners is often strangely soothing and fulfilling.

The method behind these explorations is often based on mathematical questions. Tom has been a prodigious font of original questions, most of which yielded musical compositions while some produced original mathematical theorems, on tilings, block designs, homometric sets or autosimilarity. The videos on this playlist are the right mix of pleasant and instructive, with just enough explanations to make the listener glimpse at the meaning of the music.

See the full play-list here.