Thor Johnson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thor Martin Johnson (June 10, 1913 – January 16, 1975) was an American conductor. He was born in Wisconsin Rapids, Grand Rapids,Wisconsin at the time of his birth, Wisconsin. He studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was president of the Alpha Rho chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity. A Moravian, he was deeply devoted to promoting the music of his faith. He was an initiate of Alpha Xi Chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.

In 1947 he was appointed conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the youngest American born conductor of a major American orchestra at that time. That same year, Johnson was named the first Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival in Ojai, California. He served in that capacity from 1947-1950 and again from 1952-53.

He visited composer Jan Sibelius on the personal invitation of his oldest daughter, Mrs. Eva Sibelius Paloheimo, in the Summer of 1951 at his home Ainola [(since 1972 a national museum in Järvenpää, Finland (35 km north of Helsinki)]. In 1952, he was the first recipient of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity's American Man of Music Award.

From 1958 to 1964 Dr. Johnson was a full professor and director of orchestral activities at Northwestern University at Evanston, Illinois. Thor was appointed director of the Interlochen Arts Academy and conductor of the Interlochen Arts Academy Symphony Orchestra from 1964 to 1967. He founded the Peninsula Music Festival in 1952 that still plays every August in Fish Creek, Door County, Wisconsin. Thor is especially well regarded for the dozens of first performances that he personally commissioned and conducted.For further biographical information see, "Thor Johnson: American Conductor" by Louis Nicholas, The Music Festival Committee of the Peninsula Arts Association, USA, (1982).

Upon his death in 1975, Johnson was buried in God's Acre, the Moravian cemetery in the historic Old Salem area of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

[edit] External links

• Thor Johnson's Profile at The Remington Site

v • d • e Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Music Directors Frank Van der Stucken (1895) · Leopold Stokowski (1909) · Ernst Kunwald (1912) · Eugène Ysaÿe (1918) · Fritz Reiner (1922) · Eugène Goossens (1931) · Thor Johnson (1947) · Max Rudolf (1958) · Thomas Schippers (1970) · Walter Susskind (1978) · Michael Gielen (1980) · Jesús López-Cobos (1986) · Paavo Järvi (2001)