Jonathan Newman (b. 1972) composes music rich with rhythmic drive and intricate sophistication. A recipient of the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Newman creates broadly colored musical works, often incorporating styles of pop, blues, jazz, folk, and funk into otherwise classical models. Upcoming projects include These Inflected Tentacles, a chamber work commissioned by the New York City-based Avian Orchestra, and a new work for orchestra commissioned by the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras. Recent commissions include Vivid Geography for women’s chorus and chamber orchestra on a text by poet Marcella Durand, written for the 2011 Japan Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference and the University of Houston, Stereo Action, written for a consortium of percussion ensembles, and Sowing Useful Truths, commissioned by the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Other recent works includeSymphony No. 1, My Hands Are a City—a wind ensemble commission based on themes of mid-century American Beat Culture, De Profundis for massed winds, Milori Blue for euphonium and piano, Concertino for flute solo, chamber winds, and piano, The Vinyl Six, recorded by the chamber group Avian Orchestra on Fantastic Music for a Fabulous Time(Avian Music), and arrangements of electronica for Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound Performs Aphex Twin (Cantaloupe). 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, Klavier, Mark Custom, Naxos, and Summit Records. Newman holds degrees from Boston University’s School for the Arts (MusB), where he studied composition with Richard Cornell and Charles Fussell, and The Juilliard School (MusM), where he studied with composers John Corigliano andDavid Del Tredici.
[June 2011]