The art of asking (the right) musical questions to mathematicians: Tom Johnson's contribution to the MaMuX seminar

This article focuses on the role that Tom Johnson played as a composer posing all kinds of questions to mathematicians during the fifteen seasons of the MaMuX (Mathematics/Music and relations with other disciplines) seminar. This monthly seminar, that took place at IRCAM in Paris from 2001 to 2016, provided a very creative environment for the composer who was able to discover and explore new theoretical ideas that he successively (and successfully) applied in his compositions. At the same time, the theoretical questions the composer addressed to mathematicians had an important impact on mathematics and music research and enabled the “mathemusical” community to progress in many theoretical fields such as tiling problems, Block Designs, self-similarity, homometry, and juggling.