Biography

Hunter Johnson was a Johnston County, NC, native and a highly regarded American composer, teacher, and scholar. The son of Amos Cephus and Martha Barbour Johnson, he was born April 14, 1906, on the family farm in Johnston County, NC.

After graduating from Benson High School, he entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill), NC, but transferred to Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and graduated in 1929.

Johnson taught at the universities of Manitoba, Michigan, Illinois, Texas, and Cornell University and was a guest instructor at the N. C. School of the Arts. He received the following professional awards during his career: Prix de Rome (1933); two Guggenheim Fellowships (1941 and 1954); National Institute of Arts and Letters (1958); Citation from the N. C. General Assembly (1963); North Carolina’s Fine Arts Award (1965); North Carolina’s first Composer Laureate (1991).

Johnson retired in 1971 and returned to live on his family farm in Benson, NC, where he continued to work on his musical compositions. He died on August 27, 1998.

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