[1] He and one of his sisters adopted the middle name Hella, after the village in Norway that their family came from.
[4] In January 2001, Johnson was named director of the Houston Masterworks Chorus, a position he held for two years.
[11] On February 8, 2015, he and Conspirare won the Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance for their album The Sacred Spirit of Russia (Harmonia mundi HMU 807526).
This three-part "fusion oratorio" honors the life of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was murdered in Wyoming in 1998.
Written in a variety of musical styles, the work incorporates poetry by Hildegard of Bingen, Lesléa Newman, Michael Dennis Browne, and Rumi, along with passages from Shepard's personal journal, interviews and writings from his parents, and more.