Christopher Wendell Jones

composer
pianist
conductor
works · concerts · repertoire · sfSound · contact
Christopher Jones is a composer of intricately designed music that explores issues of identity, narrative and form in distinctive, unconventional ways. His music has been performed in North America and Europe at venues such as the Darmstadt Ferienkurse in Germany, the Ictus International Composition Seminar in Brussels, Merkin Hall in New York and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Christopher has particular interest in composing chamber music and has worked with ensembles such as the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Ictus Ensemble, Earplay and Ensemble Inauthentica, and soloists such as flautist, Lisa Cella, violinist Mark Menzies and guitarist, Magnus Andersson. Among his honors are a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation, awarded in 2009 for a large ensemble work for the sfSoundGroup, and commissions from the American Composers Forum for three chamber works in conjunction with a Composer-in-the-Schools residency at Lowell High School in San Francisco.

An active pianist and conductor, Christopher has a strong affinity for experimental and avant-garde music. He has given numerous premieres and has worked individually with composers such as John Cage, Helmut Lachenmann, Julio Estrada and Stefano Scodanibbio. He brings together his interests in composition, performance and improvisation in his work as pianist, conductor and co-director of sfSound, an innovative ensemble and concert series that is redefining the boundaries of new music in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Christopher currently resides in San Francisco, and has taught composition and music theory at Stanford, San Francisco State and San José State Universities. He completed his doctorate in composition at Stanford, where he studied with Brian Ferneyhough and Jonathan Harvey, and also earned degrees in composition from the University of Calgary, studying with Allan Gordon Bell, and piano performance from Indiana University and the New England Conservatory, studying with Evelyne Brancart and Patricia Zander.