Niki Johnson is a percussionist and composer-performer whose experimental musical practice incorporates interdisciplinary collaboration, improvisation, contemporary classical repertoire, and performance art. She collaborates with fine-artists and musicians to create new artworks existing in the liminal spaces of art mediums. Her current PhD research at Monash University explores percussionists’ collaborations with sculptors and designers, and the process of co-creating, and composing for new sculptural musical
instruments. Materials of particular interest to her are glass and ceramic, with these materials forming the basis of her sculptural percussion collaborations.
Niki was a 2019-2022 Speak Percussion Bespoke Artist, performs regularly with Ensemble Offspring, and was a 2021 Classical Freedman nominee. She 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 works on the unceded land of the Gadigal people and Kulin Nations.