William Johnston was born in 1953.
He studied languages at Trinity College Cambridge and had a varied career as (briefly) a peripatetic brass teacher then variously: unemployed, road sweeper and local government officer. He subsequently worked as a freelance counsellor, digital sound editor and part-time cleaner, while studying for a diploma in counselling at Brighton University. Until he retired some five years ago, he worked as an addiction counsellor, whilst also providing administrative assistance to youth workers at Brighton & Hove City Council.
A brief composing career through his teens and early twenties was abandoned in favour of writing poetry until he met someone with a large orchestral samples library and the skill to use it. This re-awakened his interest in composition.
Since then he has written several large-scale works, together with a number of smaller pieces, several of which have been performed locally.
He is entirely self-taught, writing in a style which he describes as “stuck somewhere in the first half of the twentieth century”, though this may be an unjustifiably severe self-judgement.
