Carly Johnson serves as Associate Professor of Trumpet at Alabama State University, an historic HBCU located in Montgomery, Alabama. At ASU, Dr. Johnson teaches applied trumpet and brass methods, and is the director of the ASU Trumpet Ensemble which performs regularly at regional and national festival events, showcasing a repertoire of traditional African American spirituals and jazz-influenced idioms. During her tenure at ASU, she has been nominated twice for the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Dr. Johnson received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Trumpet Performance from The Ohio State University where she studied with Tim Leasure and Richard Burkart. She earned the Master of Music degree in Trumpet Performance from the University of Florida where she studied with Joyce Davis, and the Bachelor degree in Music Education from the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University where she studied with Christopher Krummel and Esotto Pellegrini.
Carly is a versatile musician having appeared as a clinician, soloist, and chamber musician throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Carly currently performs with the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra and also for regional theatre shows performed at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, Alabama. Other performance credits include the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, Youngstown Symphony Orchestra, Western Reserve Opera, W.D. Packard Band, West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Columbus ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Brass Band of Columbus, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Ashland Symphony Orchestra, Mansfield Symphony Orchestra and Firelands Symphony Orchestra.
As a soloist, Carly was awarded 1st Prize in the Trumpet Division of the 2010 Susan B. Slaughter International Brass Solo Competition hosted by the International Women’s Brass Conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She also competed as a semi-finalist at the National Trumpet Competition in both the collegiate and masters divisions during her undergraduate and graduate studies. She has given premiere performances of new original works written for trumpet by composers Greg Jackson, Night, op. 61 for Solo Trumpet, Matthew Saunders, Quintamorous Fantasy, and Doug Bristol, Sound the Charge. She has played Bach Stradivarius trumpets and Vincent Bach mouthpieces for nearly twenty years, and is an artist/clinician for the Trumpet Division of the Conn-Selmer Corporation. Originally from northeast Ohio, she now resides in Montgomery, Alabama along with her trumpet enthusiast fiancé and former rescue dog, Bubba.