Jonathan Woolgar draws from a wide range of musical experience to create work that is communicative without compromise. His music explores the lines between musical eloquence and ineloquence, and between the fragmentary and the symphonic, with a focus on the physical, human dimensions of live performance on acoustic instruments.

Jonathan’s music has been performed at the Bridgewater Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall and Basilica San Marco, Venice by performers such as Manchester Camerata, Aurora Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, as well as broadcast several times on BBC Radio 3. In 2010, Jonathan won BBC Young Composer, and has since been Composer in Residence at Eton College and at Cambridge University Musical Society. Jonathan has done several major projects with soprano Héloïse Werner, as well as being a member of the LSO’s Panufnik Composers Scheme and a Royal Philharmonic Society composer, as part of which Canzoni et Ricercari was premiered at the 2021 Cheltenham Music Festival, going on to win the RMA’s Tippett Medal. Other recent projects include a new orchestral work for the London Symphony Orchestra’s Barbican season and further performances by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

Whilst currently based in London, Jonathan originally hails from Pontefract in West Yorkshire. He attended Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester from 2008-10, studying composition with Jeremy Pike and Gavin Wayte. From 2010-13 he read music at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge where he studied composition with Giles Swayne, before going on to study with David Sawer at the Royal Academy of Music. He completed his PhD supervised by Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and has an active teaching career.