Gaberiel Johnson

 A trumpet animated with the voice of a messenger. Electronic beats that speak of sad days gone by. Powerful statements from a man with a mission and wandering songs that leave you wanting more.

A man, his trumpet, and electronic alchemy call down lightning on Fra_ctured, coming out February 16, 2010 from Electrofone Music. Gabriel Johnson’s creation calculates a new bearing in the world of jazz and electronic music, a fractured triangulation past the Islands of Electronica and into the open sea. This album—appearing on the label run by Carmen Rizzo, known for his work with Seal, Jem, Coldplay, and Paul Oakenfold, and as co-founding member of global electronica band Niyaz—is a new direction for serious trumpet music, a genre too long confined to the stolid hallways of special schools and jazz clubs. 

That’s about where Gabriel Johnson, virtuoso trumpet player turned ascendant electronica demigod, found himself a few years ago. He was this conservatory prodigy, a golden boy acolyte in the temple of commercial jazz groomed for the life of a high priest. The Wunderkind began playing the trumpet when he was eleven years old, giving up baseball practice for the life of a musician, and had hardly turned back on his quick climb up the mountain. After graduation from the Conservatory, he moved to Los Angeles, and soon Clint Eastwood was calling him up to play original music for his movies. “Clint would be right in the room,” recalls Johnson matter-of-factly. “If he likes something, he just nods his head.” (Gabriel’s powerful trumpet playing appeared in both Eastwood’s Changeling and Invictus.)