"Wonderfully alert to every shift in colour and mood, and immaculately sustaining the magic atmosphere"
"Convincingly organic in his approach…small details are relished and then elegantly absorbed into the whole…bold and yet always professional”
Jonathan has a natural affinity with opera and made his Glyndebourne Festival debut in 2021, conducting 4 sold-out performances of Luisa Miller with the London Philharmonic. In Autumn 2021, he returned for Glyndebourne Touring Opera’s production of Don Pasquale, having conducted two performances of Rigoletto for GTO in 2019. In September 2022, he joined the Lucerne Symphony to conduct a production of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle at the Lucerne Theater in association with the Lucerne Festival.
Highlights of 2022/23 include invitations back to Salzburg, Munich, Residentie Orkest and a visit to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and the start of his tenure as Resident Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the London Mozart Players.
The 2021/22 season saw a string of debuts for Jonathan, including London Philharmonic, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, Bonn Beethoven Orchester, Munich Symphony, Luzern Symphony and Aalborg Symphony. Along the way he established new relationships with leading soloists such as Steven Isserlis, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Daniel Mueller-Schott and Abel Selaocoe. He joined the Britten Sinfonia for the Barbican’s 40th birthday festivities, conducted the Salzburg Mozarteumorchester in Austria and on tour in Italy, and returned to the Hallé Orchestra.
He has recorded CDs with the London Symphony Orchestra (2022) and Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie (2021, Strauss and Cesar Franck): “irresistible” - Musicweb International. For the past 14 years Jonathan has been Artistic Director of the Northern Chords Festival based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Passionate about unearthing little-known composers and championing new work, Jonathan has commissioned several premieres by young composers such as Vlad Maistorovici, Jack Sheen and Freya Waley Cohen.
His conducting career launched when he was appointed Assistant Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 2016-2018, working with Music Director Mirga Grazynte-Tyla, conducting a wide range of repertoire, and closing the orchestra's 16/17 season at Symphony Hall. More recently, he returned to the CBSO in April 2021. After taking over rehearsals of Rusalka at the DSO Berlin for Robin Ticciati, the orchestra invited Jonathan back to conduct Holst’s The Planets as part as a multimedia project.
He has also been Artistic Director of the Northern Chords Festival, based in his hometown of Newcastle-on-Tyne, for the past fourteen years.