Jonathan Little

The John Clementi Collard Fellow in Music of the Worshipful Company of Musicians 2012 (UK); ASCAPlus Awards for Concert Music Composition 2006-12 (USA); PRS for Music Foundation / Bliss Trust Composer Bursary 2012 (UK); The Authors' Foundation / Royal Literary Fund Award 2011 (UK);  Musicians Benevolent Fund Professional Development Award 2009 (UK); Fanfare Magazine Critic's Choice (Want List 2008) (USA); Masterworks Recording Prizes 2004-07 (USA); Francis Chargin Bursary 2006 (UK); Thomas Tallis Commemoration Medal 2005 (UK); Kenneth Leighton Trust Award 2005 (UK); Lady Turner Exhibition 1987 (AUS); Wright Prize 1986 (AUS); Ivy May Pendelbury Bursary 1985-6 (AUS); Kefford Scholarship 1985 (AUS).  

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The atmospheric and evocative music of ASCAP award-winning composer JONATHAN LITTLE is characterised by its beauty, intensity, and richness of material. The title track of his most recent album, Polyhymnia, was described by Cambridge University Press's new music journal, Tempo, as one of the most imaginative, melodious and expressive pieces of serious contemporary music that can ever have been written and recorded (January 2012).

After initial studies at the University of Melbourne, where he won the Wright Prize in Instrumental Music and Lady Turner Exhibition for overall excellence, he completed the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Monash University by research into the development of exotic orchestration in 19th- and 20th-century music.

As a member of the Australian Youth Orchestra from 1986 to 1988, he participated in the orchestra's Bicentennial European Tour, and while still an undergraduate student, Jonathan performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and also played for the annual New Music workshops of the Australian Opera Company.

Jonathan moved to the UK in the mid 1990’s, and was appointed Lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University on their pioneering Music Industry Management course (the first such degree course in Europe) – where he specialised in the workings of the British and international recording industry, and taught songwriting analysis.

From 2004 to 2007 the US-headquartered French contemporary music label ERM (Editions de la Rue Margot) became the first record company to release a selection of his compositions within their prestigious "Masterworks" series – a multi-volume CD set showcasing international contemporary composers. On ERM, his works are performed by the Czech and Kiev Philharmonic Orchestras, with vocal soloists of the Sofia Opera (Vols. 3, 5, 8, 10 & 11). Other important musical premieres include Jonathan’s Kyrie for double choir and soloists, first given by the Thomas Tallis Society/Philip Simms at Waltham Abbey, Essex, and St. Alfege, Greenwich, at the historic Tallis 500th Anniversary Concerts in 2005. Kyrie was memorably performed at the Easter Tenebrae Concert at Wells Cathedral in 2007 conducted by Nigel Perrin, and in the same year poignantly featured in Thierry Donard’s French DVD release, Nuit de la Glisse (Uppercut Entertainment).

In America, Jonathan has been the recipient of six successive ASCAPlus Awards for Concert Music and 5 Masterworks Recording Prizes. Recordings have been supported by the Kenneth Leighton Trust (UK) and the Foundation for New Music (USA).  In 2009 he became the first composer to receive a Musicians Benevolent Fund Professional Develeopment Award (UK), and, in 2012, Jonathan was elected The John Clementi Collard Fellow in Music - one of the most prestigious awards of the Worshipful Company of Musicians (established in 1500).  The fellowship has been offered on average every three years since 1931 in open competition among Britain's leading performers, composers, conductors and scholars aged 27-50.  Jonathan joins a select group of composers listed amongst former Collard Fellows, who include Herbert Howells, Constant Lambert, William Alwyn, Edmund Rubbra, Gordon Jacob and Alan Rawsthorne.  In addition, Jonathan was awarded a PRSF / Bliss Trust Composer Bursary in 2012 to support the composition of the next work in his "Nine Muses" series - Erato.

Jonathan is also a member of the Society of Authors, and continues to write and edit works on a variety of music-related topics, ranging from historical works discussing instrumentation and orchestration, to more topical writings on popular music performance and the future of the music and entertainment industries. In 2001, he co-founded Music Business Journal, and was for five years its joint Managing Editor. In a seminal series of articles commissioned for American Outlook magazine, published by the Hudson Institute (2001-02) – a US scholarly think-tank which helps shape government policy – Jonathan assessed the state of contemporary songwriting, the phenomenon of the celestial jukebox, and the implications of the rise of digital cinema. Jonathan was Series Editor of the Academy of Contemporary Music’s definitive 36-volume guide, The Academy Popular Music Tuition Series (2003-05), and, at the request of the British Academy, he contributed to Heart & Soul: Revealing the Craft of Songwriting, published by Sanctuary to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Ivor Novello Awards. In 2005 he was appointed first Consultant Editor to A&C Black’s flagship volume of musical reference, the "Musicians’ and Songwriters’ Yearbook".

During 2010-13 five new book titles are being issued (two published by Wirripang):
- The Influence of European Literary and Artistic Representations of the 'Orient' on Western Orchestral Compositions, ca.1840-1920: From Oriental Inspiration to 'Exotic' Orchestration (New York: Mellen Press, 2010); a companion to:
- Literary Sources of Nineteenth-Century Musical Orientalism:  The Hypnotic Spell of the Exotic on Music of the Romantic Period (New York: Mellen Press, 2011).  (This comprehensive two-volume, 950-page study of exoticism in music and literature received a UK Authors' Foundation / Royal Literary Fund Award for 2011.)
- Forms and Possibilities: Selected Verse (1983-2002), with an Essay ...An Appreciation and a Defence of the Artist's Temperament (including 16 modern sonnets using antique forms) (Wollongong: Wirripang, 2011)
- On Musical Composition: A Philosophy of and an Approach to Early 21st-Century Concert Music Composition (Wollongong:  Wirripang, 2012/13)
- Practical Songwriting (London: Robert Hale, 2013)

Jonathan appears in the UK Music Publishers’ Association Register of Expert Musicologists, and is a member of the Fellowship of Australian Composers, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA), the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and of the Los Angeles Chapter of America’s National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS).

From 2001-2006, Jonathan was Principal of the Academy of Contemporary Music (ACM) in Guildford, England – Europe’s largest specialist academy for students of contemporary music, and the first education institution to win the Queen’s Award for Enterprise (Innovation category). He also helped establish the first contemporary music degree course in Italy (in Bologna), and in South Africa (at COPA), and has worked as Curriculum Consultant to the Brighton Institute of Modern Music, and as Visiting Lecturer in Media Music Composition at the University of Surrey. Currently, Jonathan is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Chichester.

In 2008, an initial selection of his compositions was issued on CD, entitled "TERPSICHORE AND OTHER WORKS". Cambridge University Press's Tempo magazine hailed it as a ground-breaking tour de force, while in America, Fanfare magazine admired its music of tremendous power.  The disc was subsequently selected to join Fanfare's "Want List 2009" as one of that year's most striking new worldwide releases.  Jonathan's second major disc, "POLYHYMNIA", was issued in America on the Navona fine music label of PARMA Recordings in February 2012, supported by the Musicians Benevolent Fund (UK) and ASCAP (USA).  (See:  www.navonarecords.com).

For further information, and for scores and recordings, Jonathan may be contacted via his publishers.

WORLDWIDE CRITICAL OPINION:

- a major new, original and quite brilliant classical voice – Lynn René Bayley, citation in The Want List 2008, Fanfare Magazine (Nov-Dec 2008, USA)

*** A FANFARE MAGAZINE RECOMMENDED RECORDING FOR 2008 ***
- [Of Polyhmnia - for multi-divisi string orchestra:] certainly one of the most imaginative, melodious and expressive pieces of serious contemporary music that can ever have been written and recorded ... Polyhymnia conjures up a heart rending panorama:  it is immensely poetic, almost otherworldly, and employs an exceptionally hypnotic array of musical colour. - John Wheatley, in Tempo (Cambridge University Press, January 2012) (UK)
_ Little demonstrates real excellence in composition, an inventive and accessible musical mind ... vivid and colourful writing ... unusual and finely wrought - Bob Lord, CEO, PARMA Recordings (November 2011) (USA)
-  very well crafted ... very effective - Stephen Layton, Choral Conductor and Director of Music, Trinity College, Cambridge (October 2009) (UK)

- Here, Little demonstrates his command of orchestration ... lush and at ease with the tropes of modernist tonal music ... the crafting of orchestration is finely honed - Helen O'Brien, Music Forum (May-July 2009) (Australia)

- An inspired creation ... beautifully expansive ... voluptuous sonorities – Patric Standford, Music & Vision (May 2009) (UK)
- mightly impressed - Martin Anderson, Founder and Managing Director, Toccata Classics (January 2009) (UK)

- This is music that brings to mind so much else but at the same time isn't quite like anything you've heard before. … [a] whirling kaleidoscope of sounds. … An extraordinary range of sensations. ... This is certainly novel stuff and I suspect time will prove it to be a good deal more than that. – Simon Thomas, Music OMH (November 2008) (UK)

- Little’s music sounds like no one else’s. Not anyone’s. ... to put it into words degrades the astonishing range of colors and moods he creates. … Trust me, once you’re about halfway through the title work, you won’t be able to take it off. … Mr. Little is quite a talent indeed. – Lynn René Bayley, Fanfare (May-June 2008) (USA)

- innovative music … incandescent … a positively dynamic musical palette … moving the listener irrevocably onward to a brightly illuminated plain of poetic splendour, rhythm and ecstasy – John Wheatley, in Tempo (Cambridge University Press, January 2008) (UK)

- immense creativity and innovation while remaining accessible to new listeners – ASCAP Playback Magazine (Summer, 2006) (New York, USA)

- innovative and accessible to both musicians and audiences – Keith Lowde, former Deputy Managing Director and Company Secretary, Music-Copyright Protection Society [MCPS] (London, UK)

- touching music … a unique voice – Maestro Robert Ian Winstin, Executive Director of the Foundation for New Music (Virginia, USA)

Artists who have performed or recorded the works of Jonathan Little include: Czech Philharmonic Orchestra; Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra; Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra; Soloists of the Sofia Opera; mezzo-soprano Veronica McHale (Chicago); Vox Moderne; Bath Camerata; Tallis Chamber Choir.

Jonathan Little's Performing Rights are assigned to ASCAP (for clearance see: www.ascap.com – "ACE Title Search" – "Search the Database" – Writers / Find "Jonathan Little")

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