Thomas Johannsen / Genetic Choir

Thomas Johannsen (*1974) is an internationally asked-for maker, performer and teacher in the field of interdisciplinary improvisation, with a special focus on the human voice. He is the artistic director of Amsterdam based vocal improvisation ensemble The Genetic Choir.

The Genetic Choir has become the permanent research framework and group of performers with whom Thomas develops and presents his artistic ideas about dynamic open systems, authorship, swarm intelligence, chaos and self-organization. His projects often connect socially relevant issues to artistic work forms and are situated at the interface between music, the performing arts and philosophy.

See for current projects http://www.genetic-choir.org

Next to making work, teaching and leading projects for the last 15 years in Genetic Choir context in the Netherlands, he has brought this unique blend of embodied voice improvisation and composing to countries such as France, Italy, Czech Republic, England, Germany, the United States and Japan.

He is co-founder of WhatIIIF? – an international, nomadic improvisation research festival, with yearly editions since 2017. (see impro.wiki and genetic-choir.org/whatiiif for more information)

Thomas is also a certified aikido teacher and holds a 3rd Dan of the Aikikai Hombu Dojo in Japan. The more than 20 years of experience as an aikido practitioner have influenced strongly his teaching methods for finding strong embodiment and the ability to have subtle and razor-sharp (musical) connections with other improvisers while creating together.