Jonathan Leshnoff

Last updated

Jonathan Leshnoff (born September 8, 1973) is an American classical music composer and pedagogue. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Jonathan Leshnoff was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey to Susan and Steven Leshnoff; his mother was an artist, and his father an engineer. For his undergraduate studies, Leshnoff attended Johns Hopkins University and Peabody Conservatory concurrently, earning bachelor's degrees in Anthropology and Music Composition, respectively. He went on to receive a Master’s of Music from Peabody, then received his Doctorate of Music from the University of Maryland. Leshnoff was raised observing Conservative Judaism. During his student years at Johns Hopkins, he delved deeper into his beliefs and began to practice Orthodox Judaism. [2] [3]

Career

Leshnoff lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where he composes and is a professor of music at Towson University. He has composed scores of works, including four string quartets, four oratorios, twelve concerti, and four symphonies. His compositions have been performed by more than eighty orchestras worldwide including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, among many others. Leshnoff's compositions have also been premiered by soloists including violinist Gil Shaham, violist Roberto Díaz, cellist Johannes Moser, guitarist Manuel Barrueco, and pianist Joyce Yang. [1]

Notable recent commissions include his Clarinet Concerto (2015), the oratorio Zohar (2015), the Violin Concerto No. 2 (2017), and his 2019 Piano Concerto. The Clarinet Concerto was jointly commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra, and premiered in April 2016 in Philadelphia with principal clarinetist Ricardo Morales under Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Zohar was co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, premiered under conductor Robert Spano in April 2016, and subsequently recorded by that ensemble. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra co-commissioned Leshnoff’s second violin concerto, and Dallas premiered the work featuring soloist Alexander Kerr in May 2018 at Jaap van Zweden's final concert as music director of that orchestra. It has since been recorded by Noah Bendix-Balgley and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic on a 2023 Naxos album. In November 2019, Joyce Yang premiered his Piano Concerto [1] with the Kansas City Symphony and Music Director Michael Stern; it was subsequently released on the Reference Recordings label.

While a large portion of his work is orchestral, Leshnoff has composed for many chamber ensembles and symphonic bands. The United States Marine Band commissioned a Symphony for Winds to mark the 225th anniversary of that ensemble in 2023; [4] it had previously recorded a transcription of Leshnoff's Clarinet Concerto on its 2017 album Arioso. [5] The United States Navy Band, US Air Force Band, Frost School of Music Band and Towson University Symphonic Band have also performed his band works.

Leshnoff has taught at Towson University for over twenty years on subjects including orchestration, contemporary music history, music entrepreneurship, and theory. He was the 2013 recipient of the University System of Maryland Regents Award in Scholarship, recognizing a select faculty member from the University of Maryland system for significant publication profile. The composer has entrusted all of his manuscripts to the special collections archive at Towson's Cook Library. [6]

Awards and recognition

In late 2019, a Nashville Symphony album featuring Leshnoff's works, including his fourth symphony (commissioned by that orchestra in collaboration with the Violins of Hope), was nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Compendium. [7] In an independent study, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra found Leshnoff to be among the ten most performed living composers internationally (tied for 7th) among American orchestras in the 2015–2016 season.

Selected works

Leshnoff's catalog includes roughly eighty works to date, including four symphonies, fourteen concerti, and five oratorios. [8] Many of his scores are available from the music publisher and distributor Theodore Presser Company.

Discography

Related Research Articles

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s, she had shifted to a postmodernist, neoromantic style. She has been called "one of America's most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers." She was a 1994 inductee into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Zwilich has served as the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Tower</span> American composer, concert pianist and conductor

Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.

John Harris Harbison is an American composer and academic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Alwyn</span> English composer (1905–1985)

William Alwyn, was an English composer, conductor, and music teacher.

Nicolas Oreste Flagello was an American composer and conductor of classical music. He was one of the last American composers to develop a distinctive mode of expression based wholly on the principles and techniques of late romanticism.

Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.

Arnold Atkinson Cooke was a British composer, a pupil of Paul Hindemith. He wrote a considerable amount of chamber music, including five string quartets and many instrumental sonatas, much of which is only now becoming accessible through modern recordings. Cooke also composed two operas, six symphonies and several concertos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dmitri Smirnov (composer)</span> Russian composer

Dmitri Nikolaevich Smirnov was a Russian-British composer and academic teacher, who also published as Dmitri N. Smirnov and D. Smirnov-Sadovsky. He wrote operas, symphonies, string quartets and other chamber music, and vocal music from song to oratorio. Many of his works were inspired by the art of William Blake.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth Fuchs</span> Musical artist

Kenneth Daniel Fuchs is a Grammy Award-winning American composer. He currently serves as Professor of Music Composition at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emil Tabakov</span>

Emil Tabakov is a Bulgarian conductor, composer and double-bass player.

Eduardo Alonso-Crespo is an Argentine composer of classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Jeffrey Shapiro</span> American composer, conductor, and author (born 1951)

Michael Jeffrey Shapiro is an American composer, conductor, and author.

David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.

Steven Roy Gerber was an American composer of classical music. He attended Haverford College, graduating in 1969 at the age of twenty. He then attended Princeton University with a fellowship to study musical composition.

Miguel del Águila is a prolific Uruguay-born American composer of contemporary classical music. He has been nominated three times for Grammys and has received numerous other awards.

Nigel Clarke is a British composer and musician. He is a former head of composition and contemporary music at the London College of Music and Media.

Markand Thakar is an American conductor and music director emeritus of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra (BCO).

Roger John Goeb was an American composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mohammed Fairouz</span> American composer

Mohammed Fairouz is an American composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Reale</span> American composer

Paul Reale was an American composer, pianist, and Professor of Music at the University of California, Los Angeles.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Jonathan Leshnoff". Towson University. Retrieved 2023-11-27.
  2. "Transcending The Music". Baltimore Jewish Times. December 16, 2016. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  3. "Recordings by Jonathan Leshnoff | Now available to stream and purchase at Naxos". www.naxos.com. Retrieved 2023-11-27.
  4. "Aspire: "The President's Own" at 225". United States Marine Band. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
  5. "Arioso". United States Marine Band. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
  6. "Jonathan Leshnoff". Towson University. Retrieved August 5, 2019.
  7. Feiler, Alan; Merwin, Ted (November 25, 2019). "Baltimore-Based Composer Jonathan Leshnoff Nominated for a Grammy". JMORE. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  8. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 28, 2017. Retrieved August 28, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. Garcia, Jacob Adam (April 7, 2020). "A Comprehensive Study of Three Compositions for Percussion by Composer Jonathan Leshnoff, "Run" (2003), "…without a chance" (2003), and "Concerto for Two Percussionists and Orchestra" (2011), including a Structural and Aesthetic Analysis". UNT Digital Library. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  10. "Composer Jonathan Leshnoff brings music, mysticism to Strathmore". Washington Jewish Week. March 16, 2017. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  11. Neas, Patrick (May 15, 2016). "Composer Jonathan Leshnoff explores the depths of war in world premiere symphony". The Kansas City Star . Kansas City. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  12. Unger, Mike (January 10, 1995). "Fall 2019 – TU Magazine". Towson University. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  13. "KC STUDIO: Kansas City Symphony Presents World Premiere of Jonathan Leshnoff's Piano Concerto". Kansas City Symphony. November 8, 2019. Retrieved December 2, 2021.

Further reading