Jonathan Russell

ADORNO is excited to premiere a new work by composer/clarinetist Jonathan Russell. Jon also performs regularly with ADORNO’s clarinetist Jeff Anderle in their bass clarinet duo, Sqwonk. An active artist in the San Francisco Bay Area, he also cofounded the Switchboard Music Festival, presenting “an eclectic, genre-crossing/-breaking/-bastardizing group of experimentalists, innovators, and musical omnivores.”

A uniquely creative and versatile musician, composer and clarinetist Jonathan Russell is active in a wide variety of music, from classical to experimental to klezmer to church music, and has composed for ensembles ranging from orchestra to bass clarinet quartet to rock band. His work stretches the boundaries of contemporary classical music, opening it up to the sounds and attitudes of the other musical traditions that surround it. His music, while deeply connected to the best of the classical tradition, is passionately concerned with the sounds and ideas of today’s world. He has received commissions from ensembles such as the San Francisco Symphony, Empyrean Ensemble, Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, and Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, and performances from numerous other ensembles and performers, including the Berkeley Symphony, San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, the BluePrint Project, the new music bands FIREWORKS, Capital M, and Oogog, and pianists Sarah Cahill, Lisa Moore, and Lara Downes. In the 2007 New Ariel Competition, Russell’s piano piece Metamorphosis #1 was chosen to be professionally recorded for release on the Capstone record label by acclaimed pianist Jeffrey Jacob. His orchestral composition Essay was the winner of the 2002 Lee Highsmith Orchestral Composition Competition, and received Honorable Mention in the 2003 Minnesota Orchestra Reading Competition. Upcoming projects include commissions from the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Adorno Ensemble, Classical Revolution, and pianist Matthew McCright.
Also active as a performer on clarinet and bass clarinet, Jonathan is a member of the heavy metal inspired Edmund Welles bass clarinet quartet and the Balkan/klezmer/experimental band Zoyres. He also plays in, composes for, and is a founding member of the Sqwonk bass clarinet duo, and freelances in the Bay Area as a classical, contemporary, and klezmer clarinetist.
Jonathan teaches composition at San Francisco Conservatory’s Adult Extension and Preparatory divisions, serves as Music Director at First Congregational Church, San Francisco, writes for the online San Francisco Classical Voice, and has served on the Music Theory faculty at San Francisco Conservatory’s collegiate division. He has a B.A. in Music from Harvard University and an M.M. in Music Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His composition teachers have included Dan Becker, Elinor Armer, Eric Sawyer, John Stewart, and Eric Ewazen.

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Jonathan Russell

Sqwonk