Jonathan studied Music at Oxford University and the clarinet and piano at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he won the Lutine Prize. He has since established an international reputation as a composer for theatre, television and the concert hall.

For The David Glass Ensemble, currently celebrating their 45th anniversary, he composed (and often performed) scores for The Hansel Gretel Machine, Off the Wall, The Lost Child, The Red Thread, The Chimp That Spoke, and Disembodied. Performing his music with the Ensemble took him to Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Columbia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and South Korea. Back home Jonathan composed for the National Theatre (James Joyce’s Exiles and Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday), for dance companies Stan Won’t Dance and DV8, for many theatre companies including theatre-rites, Blind Summit, and Flugjandi Fiskar (Iceland). Jonathan’s music theatre work Endangered was performed by British Youth Music Theatre, The Moon Behind the Clouds song cycle was staged at BAC sung by Barb Jungr, and his cantata The Arrangement was performed by The Song Company at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and subsequently in a staging by renowned Australian sculptor Ken Unsworth. Jonathan went on to compose a further three scores for Ken Unsworth (and his collaborators, Australian Dance Artists) and a soundtrack for a film, Solitude, premiered at the Lincoln Centre, New York. Jonathan has performed his own songs from his many CDs both in the UK and in Europe alongside singer Kevin Walton (whose other singing credits include a Bjork opera for La Monnaie Opera House, Brussels and a recent collaboration with Meredith Monk in Amsterdam). They notably performed Jonathan’s songs based on museum labels (Labels) for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Jonathan’s latest work is a song cycle based on the life of Mabel Stark – a tiger tamer – composed for flute, clarinet, string quintet, piano and five singers with lyrics by Barb Jungr. Jonathan’s concert music for woodwinds has been published by Emerson Edition including Gallimaufry for clarinet and piano and The Funambulist’s Daring Feats for flute, two clarinets, and bassoon.

As a performer Jonathan was recording for BBC Radio 3 by the age of fourteen (Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for solo clarinet) and was the inaugural winner of the Lutine Prize at the Junior Guildhall School of Music and Drama (awarded for best instrumental recital). He held the position of Principal Clarinet in the National Youth Orchestra for two years before going on to perform the Nielsen and Mozart clarinet concertos at Oxford University whilst a student there (reading music), and then returning to the Guildhall for their Advanced Solo Studies course. Briefly, Jonathan was a member of Ruby Blue, the band fronted by actress Rebecca Pidgeon, and was a founding member of Errollyn Wallen’s Ensemble X, playing both clarinet and piano. Errollyn is now of course the Master of the King’s Music. Jonathan recorded and performed Katharine Norman’s Trilling Wire for clarinet and tape at Aarhus and for the NMC label. He went on to tour extensively as a Music Director, playing both clarinet and keyboards, for Opera Circus, the David Glass Ensemble, and the National Theatre, playing Mozart piano sonatas nightly for Judi Dench (appearing in David Hare’s Amy’s View) and, fetchingly dressed in blue velvet, serenading Simon Russell Beale’s Hamlet (on the recorder no less) in rep and on tour for over a year. Jonathan has improvised music for theatre companies such as Blind Summit and theatre-rites and has accompanied endless theatre and music theatre workshops. For singer and cabaret artiste Natalie Gamsu he arranged and recorded an album Misfit, and performed with her live across Australia, including at the Sydney Opera House. For singer Barb Jungr he arranged and performed songs by Elvis Presley for her CD release Love Me Tender.

Jonathan is currently based in Norfolk.