Jonathan Thomson
JONATHAN THOMSON, D.M.A.
Jonathan has been an active performer and teacher throughout the greater Los Angeles area since 2005. He has performed internationally in England, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, South Korea and China. As a chamber musician, Jonathan has competed at the Fischoff and Coleman competitions, and received guidance from the Kronos, St. Lawrence, Brentano, Lafayette, and Penderecki quartets. Jonathan has taught at APU since 2008 and was a Teaching Fellow in the top-rated Musicology Department at UCLA. He has also taught for many years at private music academies and for prominent organizations like Harmony Project and Education Through Music—LA.
If not teaching or practicing, you will most likely find him training for his next marathon or 10k.
Narrative Biography
Growing up on a farm in rural Washington State, Jonathan didn't realize until much later that the cumbersome wooden box with strings would bring him the good fortune of traveling to perform in England, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, South Korea. He began playing the cello in fifth grade in public school because he wanted to learn French horn, but lacked the patience needed to wait until band started in sixth grade. Luckily, he never made the switch the following year. His family bought his first cello with an injury settlement after a car accident; around the same time, he nearly had his ring finger amputated because of a basketball injury.
Jonathan is drawn to the musical field because music fosters and requires meaningful interactions between dynamic people. As a chamber musician, he has formed successful string quartets and piano trios that participated in the Fischoff and Coleman chamber music competitions. While in these groups, he received instruction from the Icicle Creek Piano Trio and the Kronos, St. Lawrence, Brentano, Lafayette, and Penderecki quartets. Jonathan has taught at Azusa Pacific University since 2008 and has also taught at the Harmony Project, Education Through Music—LA, Diamond Bar High School, and many private music academies.
Music is, to Jonathan, an unsolvable puzzle. Part of his attraction to the cello is that the work has no end. Further evidence of his bizarre tendencies (or perhaps a belief in futility) is his unexplainable fixation with running long distances to return to where he began (he has run four marathons). While Jonathan was at UCLA, professor Antonio Lysy oversaw Jonathan's cello puzzle: this task was also temporarily handed over to Lynn Harrell. Never one to be idle, Jonathan was also a Teaching Fellow for classes such as History of the Beatles and History of Rock 'n' Roll in the widely renowned Department of Musicology.