Jenny Olivia Johnson
Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Associate Professor - Musicology

Jenny Olivia Johnson (b. 1978 in Santa Monica, CA) is a composer, sound artist, music scholar, and Associate Professor of Musicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Her work ranges from essays on music, trauma, and synaesthesia to electroacoustic chamber songs, contemplative solo works, short amplified operas, and interactive, inter-media installations. Her current large-scale project, “The After Time” (forthcoming in 2025), is a hand-painted 2D video game opera about ludic experiences of trauma, loss, and the queer erotics of grief in 1990s New York City. Her recent exhibition “DIVE (Lucy’s Last Dance),” a full-scale recreation of a dive bar, is an interactive installation based on “The After Time” that was exhibited at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in early 2020. Jenny’s music has been performed by such ensembles as New York City Opera, The Industry, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Wild Up, Ninth Planet, and the Asko Schoenberg Ensemble, among others, and her sound art has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (in collaboration with artist Daniela Rivera), and at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. Her first two albums, “Dont Look Back” and “Sylvia Songs,” were released on Innova Recordings in 2015 and 2018, and her academic work has been published in the Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness, Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, the Transcultural Music Review, and in a forthcoming colloquy on music and trauma in the Journal of the American Musicological Society. Jenny currently teaches courses at UCLA on sound art, queer popular musics, creative and scholarly practices, music and trauma, and writing about music.

Jenny Olivia Johnson Joins Musicology Faculty
Jenny Olivia Johnson has a … different artistic process than most. The musicologist and composer, who will join The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in Fall 2023 as associate
Mark Kligman
Mickey Katz Chair of Jewish Music and Professor - Musicology, Ethnomusicology, and Humanities, Director of Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience
Nina Eidsheim
Professor of Musicology, Founder and Director of UCLA PEER Lab
Thomas Hodgson
Assistant Professor - Musicology and Music Industry (Music and Data, Global Music Industry)
Joy H. Calico
Professor and Chair of Musicology
Mitchell Morris
Professor Emeritus - Musicology
Elizabeth Randell Upton
Associate Professor - Musicology and Humanities
John Lee
Manager, Ethnomusicology & Musicology Departments
Catherine Provenzano
Assistant Professor - Musicology and Music Industry (Critical and Contemporary Perspectives on Music Technology)
Cesar Favila
Associate Professor - Musicology, Director of Undergraduate Studies
Raymond Knapp
Distinguished Professor of Musicology, Disability Studies, and Humanities; Director of the UCLA Center for Musical Humanities; Director of Graduate Studies in Musicology
Holley Replogle-Wong
Lecturer in Musicology, Program Director of Center for Musical Humanities
David MacFadyen
Professor and Chair of Music Industry, Professor - Musicology and Comparative Literature
Tiffany Naiman
Instructor - Music Industry & Musicology (Critical Perspectives, Capstone Sequence, History of Popular Music), Director of Undergraduate Programs in Music Industry
Robert Fink
Special Academic Senior Associate Dean, Professor - Music Industry, Musicology and Humanities (Music Theory, Analysis of Popular Music, Internships and Industry Partnerships)
Kat De Nicola
Assistant to the Chair - Department of Musicology and Global Jazz Studies Program
Jessica Schwartz
Associate Professor - Musicology and Music Industry (Punk and DIY)

Explore Other Degrees

Conducting
Graduate study and training in choral, orchestral, or wind conducting
Ethnomusicology
The study of global musical traditions through performance training, research, and field work
Global Jazz Studies
Jazz performance and musicianship courses are paired with African American Studies
Music Composition
Mentorship in the creation and realization of music for concerts, opera, and visual media
Music Education
Preparation for music educators leading to a BA and teaching credential in just four years
Music Industry
A leadership-focused professional degree which prepares students to transform the creative, entrepreneurial, and executive structures of the music industry
Musicology
The scholarly study of the histories, cultures, and critical interpretations of music and music-making
Music Performance
Study and training towards professional performance careers in Western classical music