Percussionist     PhD Candidate at Monash University         Pre-Tertiary and Tertiary Tutor

Niki Johnson is a percussionist and composer-performer whose musical practice incorporates contemporary classical repertoire, improvisation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and performance art. She is a current PhD Candidate at Monash University, where her research explores percussionists' collaborations with sculptors and designers, and the process of co-creating, and composing for new sculptural instruments. Her main research project is Shock Lines, a collaboration involving Niki as percussionist-composer, glass artist Caitlin Dubler, and sound designer Natasha Dubler. Shock Lines is a visceral exploration of the resonance and materiality of glass. Moving between performance and installation, the work features suspended glass-sandstone sculptures and immersive surround sound.

To complement her practice collaborating with sculptors and fine artists, Niki works with clarinettist and composer Solomon Frank in the experimental music and theatre duo Throat Pleats. This collaboration explores shifting animalistic power dynamics, balloons, hoses, and vacuum cleaners. Together, Throat Pleats has developed 'the MacroPlastic Workout', a work that boasts to be a soundtrack for your cardio workout in the year 3000.

As a freelance percussionist-composer, Niki was awarded a position in the 2019-2022 Speak Percussion Bespoke Artist program, and nominated for the 2021 Classical Freedman. She works regularly with Speak Percussion and Ensemble Offspring, has recorded percussion for Trackdown Fox studios and the ABC, and has been commissioned to perform a solo percussion work at Powerhouse Museum Jane Sheldon x Culinary Archive 2022. Niki has played percussion for Andree Greenwell's new opera The Three Marys premiering at the Sydney Opera House in 2023, and performed Damien Ricketson's Sound Touch for solo percussionist at Phoenix Central Park 2022.

Niki Johnson lives and works in Warrang/Sydney on unceded Cammeraygal and Gadigal land, and in Naarm/Melbourne on the unceded land of the Eastern Kulin Nation. She acknowledges all First Peoples of these lands and recognizes and respects their enduring art, connections to Country, and knowledge.