Jonathan G.

Jonathan attended music concerts before he was even born. Through his early childhood, both parents encouraged him to sing while they played piano. As a child, he would enter the music room after his father had finishing teaching his piano students, and the precocious Jonathan would play the student's lesson by memory. Jonathan's father took him to weekly rehearsals with Musicum Colligium at Wagner College when he was only six years old. There, he sang ancient music, including Gregorian Chants and Masses in Latin, and he played Renaissance music on the old-fashioned instruments, which prepared him for a lifetime of music-making.

Although he started with singing and piano, it wasn't long before Jonathan was learning the violin, recorder, melodica, and accordion. He also started playing B flat trumpet when he was eight years old. School bands and community orchestras kept him performing on a regular basis. He took up the French horn, flugelhorn, as well as the C and D trumpets. When he was twelve, he won a Sam Ash Music Camp Contest. Around this time, he also picked up the guitar and bass guitar. He was actually hired for a gig on the day he bought his first bass guitar, as a bandleader in need of a bass player that night had come into the store and heard Jonathan practicing.

When he finished high school, Jonathan was awarded the John Phillips Sousa Award for being the number one player in the band and for writing a Star Wars half-time show for the marching band. He received a scholarship to attend Virginia Commonwealth University and received a Music Performance degree with a minor in Jazz Studies.

Jonathan's studies have set him up to have a booming career as a performer. He played at Carnegie Hall four times between 1972 and 1976, and at Alice Tully Hall once for the bicentennial celebration. He has played trumpet with Ray Pittman & the O'Kaysions, the Coasters, the Drifters, the O'Jays, Platters, the Temptations, and Ringling Bros/Barnum & Bailey Circus. He also played keyboards for several groups including the Platters. More recently, Jonathan has performed with Gloria Gaynor, Darlene Love, Howard Tate, and Little Anthony & the Imperials.

He has also had a distinguished career in the recording studio. He loves performing live, but he also treasures the recordings he made with Jimmy Knepper, Frank Foster, Kenny Washington, Loren Schoenberg, Nino Rossanno, Joe Kennedy Jr, Steve Wilson, James Genus, Joel Futterman, Russell Scarborough, Nick Kepics, The Ray Charles Rhythm Section, The Band of Steve's plus Chez Roue, The Central Virginia Jazz Orchestra (CVJO), his Derby Day Dixieland Jazz Band and his own Jazz Warriors.

Jonathan's teachers, as well as his father who was also a teacher, inspired him to become a teacher himself. Many of Jonathan's teachers have contributed their knowledge to his musical foundation, from Jimmy & Maxine Knepper and Harold Leiberman in New York to Steve Carlson and Rolla Durham in Virginia. Jonathan saw the potential impact of teaching when he took on his first student in 1990. This student learned from Jonathan for years and ultimately became an exceptional jazz trumpet player. Seeing this student's remarkable progress over the years solidified his passion for teaching.

Jonathan's music teachers gave him as much as he was able to understand. Their systematic approach to teaching is how he carries on their work. Like his own teachers did, Jonathan meets his students where they are. His lessons are customized to fit each individual student's goals and abilities. As a budding musician, Jonathan looked up to his teachers, and he's grateful to now be in a position to apply their methods, as those methods led to his own growth as a musician, performer, and as an individual.