Jonathan Newman composes music rich with rhythmic drive and intricate sophistication, creating broadly colored musical works that incorporate styles of pop, blues, jazz, folk, and funk into otherwise classical models.
Upcoming projects include a Mass with texts by poet Victoria Chang for The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and a viola concerto for soloist Brett Deubner.
Recent commissions include Blow It Up, Start Again, written for Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras and performed by orchestras worldwide, including the Minnesota Orchestra and the Grand Rapids Symphony, and this summer by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the 2015 BBC Proms. Other recent commissions include Prayers of Steel for Chicago's Gaudete Brass, These Inflected Tentacles for chamber quartet, Vivid Geography for women's chorus and chamber orchestra, Stereo Action for percussion ensemble, and arrangements of electronica for Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound Performs Aphex Twin.
As a MacDowell Colony Fellow, he began work on an opera based on the 1962 cult horror film Carnival of Souls, in collaboration with playwright Gary Winter. His works have been recorded on Avian, BCM, Brain Music, Cantaloupe, Cedille, Klavier, Mark Custom, Naxos, Potenza, and Summit Records. Newman holds degrees from Boston University's School for the Arts and The Juilliard School, where he studied with composers John Corigliano and David Del Tredici. He was recently appointed Director of Composition & Coordinator of New Music at the Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA.
[May 2015]
