About the Groom
Jason Johnston was born on February 4, 1978. His parents Roger and Cindy had something to do with that, as well as with the birth of his sister Melissa three years later. He grew up in Orange, California, in a house with glass walls. His parents called him "The Stoic" as a toddler because he was so introverted.
From an early age Jason showed great talent for the arts, especially music. He was playing melodies by ear on the piano as soon as he could reach the keys, so his parents started him in piano lessons at age five. He also was involved in musical theater and dance, and played French horn and trumpet in band, and did very well in school, winning class medallions in music, science, and math.
He continued his piano studies over the following years, winning in dozens of competitions. His senior year of high school he was accepted as a member of the MTAC Young Artist Guild, an elite group of ten or so of the finest musicians in the state of California, through which he performed several solo recitals. He was awarded a four-year full tuition scholarship to study piano performance with Alvin Chow at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1997 he won the MTNA Collegiate Piano Competition for the state of Colorado, as a sophomore up against grad students. In 1999 he performed as a soloist with the Littleton Symphony Orchestra.
By his senior year of college, however, Jason had come to realize that a career in music was not for him; the stress and politics of musical academia had drained much of the passion he had felt for playing. So as a fallback he began to teach himself web design and development. After graduation he moved to Dallas and soon got a job as an HTML coder at a startup web firm. He quickly became an expert at that and other web technologies, and survived several rounds of post-bubble layoffs to stay with the company for three years, eventually becoming its sole client-side developer.
But by mid-2002 his longing for the mountains and open skies of Colorado had outweighed the benefits of having a stable job, so he began planning to move back. Right about that time, however, he met Julie. After several weeks of coming to realize they were perfect for each other, he decided that she was worth staying for, and postponed his moving plans. Not for too long, though; ten months later Julie agreed to move with him to Broomfield, Colorado, where they now live happily. Jason works as a freelance web developer, though he may be looking for a stable job soon. And he still plays piano, though just for his own enjoyment.
