Chris Jonas

Background information

Born September 3, 1966 (age 56)

Genres jazz, experimental music, avant-garde jazz, free jazz, contemporary classical music, free improvisation

Occupation(s) Musician, Composer, Conductor, Educator, Video Artist, Installation Artist, New Media Artist

Chris Jonas (born September 3, 1966, in Newport Beach, California) is a Santa Fe, New Mexico based composer, conductor, soprano and tenor saxophone player, filmmaker, and video artist.

As an instrumentalist, composer, and conductor, Jonas has performed, recorded, and toured internationally with Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, William Parker, Butch Morris, Del Sol String Quartet, TILT Brass, the Crossing Choir, Assif Tsahar, James Emery, and Myra Melford.

Since 1997, Jonas has acted as a board member of the Tri-Centric Foundation, a non-profit committed to the work and legacy of Anthony Braxton, and is currently acting as Vice President.

In 2014, Jonas worked with Braxton, the Tri-Centric Foundation in creating a projected video environment for Braxton's third major production of an opera, Trillium J (The Non-Unconfessionables), for its premier at Roulette, in Brooklyn, NY. He was also conductor for Braxton’s 6-hour, 63-person orchestra project, Sonic Genome, at the 2019 Berlin Jazz Festival and the Torino Jazz Festival.

He has been commissioned to create new works by the Santa Fe Opera (where he has been a repeated artist-in-residence), European Capital of Culture, SITE Santa Fe Biennials, the Crossing Choir, Museum of Anthropology of Mexico City, and the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork, Ireland.

Jonas has performed at Lincoln Center, The Torino Jazz Festival, the Berlin Jazz Festival, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, Roulette Intermedium, Casa del jazz, De Singel in Antwerp, The Lensic Theater, Banlieues Bleues Festival in Paris, The Verona Jazz Festival, FMP Total Music Meeting with Cecil Taylor and Steve Lacy, the Knitting Factory, Yoshis, The Stone, JVC Jazz Festival, the Vision Festival, Icebox, Z-Space, the National Hispanic Cultural Center, and many others.

Along with Molly Sturges, Jonas co-founded Littleglobe, the New Mexico arts and social justice non-profit, where he currently acts as Co-Director. Also with Sturges, Jonas is the recipient of the 2008 United States Artists Award in music and media as a Simon Fellow and is a winner of the 2012 Meet the Composer/Commissioning USA Award.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Jonas has focused on his Music from the Deserts project, featuring new jazz-based ensemble works created while winter camping in remote Sonora Desert areas including the Barry Goldwater Missile Range in Arizona, the US Border Wall, and the community of Yuma, Arizona.

Career

"A deeply nuanced world -- Jonas crafts a richly expansive sound that stresses subtle timbral shadings and tersely composed phrases punctuated by sudden bursts of flavorful improvisation... Distinctive, accessible, simple and achingly beautiful." - Michael Kremer, Jazziz

Jonas attended Oberlin College where he played music but majored in art, earning his bachelor's degree in Art History/Art Studio in 1988, after which he moved to Oakland, CA to pursue a career in painting.

In 1989, he met Anthony Braxton at Mills College, who would become his lifelong collaborator, as well as meeting Randy McKean, Cory Wright, and Dan Plonsey joining the group now known as Goggle.

In 1991, Jonas moved to New York, studying jazz at the New School for Social Research. Over the next decade there he joined many projects including those of William Parker, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, the Brooklyn Sax Quartet, and Butch Morris‘ conduction ensembles. His main NYC band was The Sun Spits Cherries.

From 1992-94, Jonas studied theory, harmony, and composition at Mannes School of Music with Robert Cuckson. During this time he became part of William Parker’s Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra from 1992-2001. In 1993 Jonas helped to found the New York Improvisors Collective (1994–95), which eventually became the Vision Festival.

With Cecil Taylor in 1995-97, he built a system to create an open-framework of scores for his compositions, written for different sizes of ensembles, and going deep into his affinities for mirror structures and bimodality. It was also in 1995 that Jonas began working with lifelong collaborator, Anthony Braxton.

From 1996-99, Jonas studied composition at Wesleyan University where he earned a Masters in World Music/Composition. It was here he met future collaborator Molly Sturges.

"...a gifted and original avant-garde soprano saxophonist and composer" - Harvey Pekar, Nov 16, 2000, Cleveland Scene

In 2001, he earned a Certificate in Multimedia Digital Design from New York University before relocating to Santa Fe, New Mexico with Molly Sturges. There, he formed two new bands, Bing and Rrake. In 2001, Ann Powers said of Jonas in the New York Times, "Chris Jonas’ remarkable composed suites [are] subtle breakthroughs and fantastic journeys."

In 2005, along with partner Molly Sturges, Jonas founded the New Mexico arts and social justice non-profit, Littleglobe, where he served as Executive Director from 2015 to 2022, and has served as co-director since then. Together, Sturges and Jonas received the 2008 United States Artists Award in music and media as Simon Fellow.

"Jonas cultivates a fluid relationship in his music between spontaneous gestures and planned ones; elaborately scored structures and dense improvisations can coexist within an album-length composition, sometimes as contrasting elements and sometimes as simultaneous events." - Bill Meyer, March 29, 2001, Chicago Reader

Jonas is a winner of the 2012 Meet the Composer/Commissioning USA Award for GARDEN, an ongoing series of live music, multi-media, video art, immersive installation, transmedia, and evening-long performances.

Jonas is Vice President of the Tri-Centric Foundation, non-profit organization committed to the work and legacy of Anthony Braxton. He was conductor for Braxton’s 6-hour, 63-person orchestra project, Sonic Genome, at the 2019 Berlin Jazz Festival and the 2015 (find links) Torino Jazz Festival. In 2014, Jonas worked with Braxton, the Tri-Centric Foundation in creating a projected video environment for Braxton's third major production of an intermedia opera, Braxton’s Trillium J (The Non-Unconfessionables), for its premier at Roulette, in Brooklyn, NY.

"Jonas’ imaginative, provocative compositions and arrangements that really stick out and make him one to watch." - Peter Margasak, April 25, 2019, JazzTimes

Jonas has received many commissions for large-scale installation, video, and musical performance works in the US and Europe. These include works with the Del Sol String Quartet, Crossing Choir (Philadelphia), Duo B Experimental Band (Bay Area), and the Chicago Improvisors Group. He has received commissions from the Museo Nacional de Antropología de México in Mexico City for the video and soundtrack installation of La Reina Roja (2005), and Odenwald 1152 (2007), both with Molly Sturges and painter Ricardo Mazal, the Obras Artist-in-Residence Center in Alentejo, Portugal for night (2004), an experimental video/intermedia performance project, the European Capital of Culture Festival in Cork, Ireland for moment (2005), an intermedia community ensemble performance project, In Situ (2007) and Malangan (2009), site-specific musical compositions commissioned for SITE Santa Fe’s sixth and seventh international Biennial exhibitions, and Memorylines (2007), an intermedia community-dialogue opera bridging cultural, economic, and generational boundaries in Santa Fe, commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera and the Lensic Performing Arts Center, for which Jonas received the 2007 New Visions/New Mexico award.

Jonas has worked with many other international venues including the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork, Ireland, Center for New Music, Z-Space in San Francisco, Roulette Intermedium, Lincoln Center, Knitting Factory in NYC, Gropius Bau in Berlin, and the National Theater and Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, as well as with other ensembles and musicians in Berlin, Portugal, NYC, Cleveland, Albuquerque, and Ireland.

Jonas has taught Music and Media at Wesleyan University, the College of Santa Fe, and for the New Media Arts Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe.

Activism

Littleglobe

Littleglobe, (executive director, senior producer, filmmaker, facilitator, creative director)

In 2005, along with partner Molly Sturges, Jonas co-founded the New Mexico arts and social justice non-profit, Littleglobe, where he currently acts Co-Director. Comprised of artists from across a broad swath of heritages, generations, identities, disciplines, and perspectives, Littleglobe uses co-authorship and creative art-making in direct collaboration with with Santa Fe community residents to gather personal narratives and stories. This has included work alongside grass roots and policy initiatives addressing anti-gentrification, equitable development, working against cultural erasure, struggling to ensure affordability, decentralization of power, and racial and cultural equity.

In response to the outbreak of COVID-19, Littleglobe responded by developing a hyper-local TV program for the sharing of co-authored experimental non-fiction short pieces created by Santa Fe residents during the pandemic. It weaves together micro-documentaries, musical pieces, poetry, comedy, collections of social media stunts, animation, and live-hosted segments.

"The Littleglobe mission, after all, is to unite humans across boundaries with art while telling the story of Santa Fe; to help amplify the voices of the creative, but also the marginalized and underserved."

- Alex De Vore, Santa Fe Reporter

Music from the Deserts

Music from the Deserts explores the music and video created by Jonas since the Covid pandemic, camping alone for weeks in the most remote areas of the Sonora Desert during the winter months. These trips include the Barry Goldwater Missile Range in Arizona and the US Border Wall that cuts across the granite Tinajas Altas. The music created contains elements of a jazz-based ensemble, but working outside the usual domains of traditional jazz. These musical ensembles are often accompanied by Jonas's video art works of the Goldwater Missile Range, US border walls, the community of Yuma, Arizona, as well as the vast wilderness surrounding these places. These Music from the Deserts ensembles include groups in Santa Fe, a Chicago quartet, a quartet in Northern Italy, and a Bay Area trio with bassist Lisa Mezzacappa and drummer Jason Levis.

Multi-Arts Performance

Displaced Horizons (Chris Jonas, co-composer, video artist)

Displaced Horizons was a multi-year collaboration between Jonas and composer/bassist/water-infrastructure agitator Rob Lundberg. These collaborative multimedia performances included many performers and focused on the socio-cultural and historical complexities of water infrastructures to explore water systems, such as dams, acequias, arroyos, and rivers. They were performed in June, 2018, at SITE Santa Fe (as part of the Currents New Media Festival), and in October, 2018, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison featuring (Deerhoof's John Detrich). The events were co-produced by the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies and The Center for Culture, History, and Environment.

GARDEN Series (Chris Jonas, composer, video artist, producer)

A multi-media, immersive installation, evening-long live performance trilogy of live music and video art, earning Jonas the 2012 Meet the Composer/Commissioning USA Award.

GARDEN (2008), a collaboration with the Del Sol String Quartet on “Night” performed (and installed) at Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA), with subsequent performances in the Albuquerque black box theater at the North Fourth Arts Center, and Z-Space in San Francisco.

GARDEN 2 (2012), a collaboration with the TILT Brass ensemble on “House” performed in NYC at the Stone, Downtown Settlement, and Roulette (as part of the Tri-Centric Festival), with a concert in the Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts (as part of the Currents New Media Festival).

GARDEN 3 (2016-17), created in collaboration with the Sonoran poet, Logan Phillips, “Home” has been performed at Santa Fe’s St. John’s College and with the Arcote collective in Turin, Italy (as part of the Narrazioni Jazz Festival).

Braxton’s Trillium J (The Non-Unconfessionables) (Chris Jonas, projected video director)

For Anthony Braxton’s third major production of an opera, Jonas worked with Braxton, the Tri-Centric staff to create the projected video environment wrapping the four-act opera in images and landscapes. It premiered in 2014 at Roulette, in Brooklyn, NY.

¡Presente!: Stories of Belonging and Displacement in Santa Fe (Chris Jonas, producer, filmmaker, composer, creative director)

¡Presente! is a multi-year project collecting and sharing the stories of Santa Fe’s residents who face the flattening and emptying effects of affordability and gentrification.

"Littleglobe partners with local, national, and international communities to create artistic works that empower individuals, communities, and reflect on the power of social imagination." - Allison Keys, KRQE News.

"The production grew out of a project by former state historian Dr. Estevan Rael-Gálvez, who along with Littleglobe – a local group that strives to combine art with community engagement – created it as a way get audiences to think about the past, present and future of the city." - Glen Rosales, Albuquerque Journal

IN-SITU / Malangan (Chris Jonas, composer)

Over six years, SITE Santa Fe commissioned Jonas and partner Molly Sturges to create three musical pieces responding to their 2004, 2006, and 2008 Biennials.

The first year, SITE commissioned a live silent film soundtrack for Paul Leni’s 1927 film, The Man Who Laughs, performed at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, in Santa Fe.

The second year, they performed in January 2007 at SITE Santa Fe in collaboration with a small ensemble of musicians and performers positioned throughout the SITE space to create a site-specific work responding to SITE's installation at that time. The duo worked with writer Melody Sumner Carnahan and Theater Grottesco actor John Flax to create accompanying text for this performance.

The third year, they collaborated with composer John Kennedy. This piece, Malangan, was a site-specific composition for a nine-piece orchestra, the UNM Children's Choir (co-directed by Molly Surges and Acushla Bastible), and two actors. As was the case with IN-SITU, the audience moved through the installation space to experience different parts of the composition, but never the whole piece at once.

RUTA: A Sante Fe Bus Opera (Chris Jonas, composer)

RUTA: A Sante Fe Bus Opera (2010) was a MAP Grant funded project working with the City of Santa Fe to build a non-linear and looping multi-temporal set of stories as seen from within a bus route in Santa Fe. Bus Opera was written in collaboration with a wide range of residents, bus drivers, musicians, and writers. The creative team included Acushla Bastible, Ligia Bouton, Chris Jonas, Valerie Martinez, and Molly Sturges. Project partners included the City of Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Trails Bus System, the Santa Fe Opera, and the Santa Fe Convention & Visitors Bureau. Funders included the MAP Fund, Black Rock Arts, New Mexico Arts (a division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs), City of Santa Fe Arts Commission, and UNM.

Filmography

Jonas has written pieces for numerous films and short films as well as composing pieces for the Library of Congress Film Program and the New Mexico Film Office.

Sembene! (Chris Jonas, co-composer, associate producer)

Sembene! is a is a 2015 feature documentary film focusing on the life of Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. It was co-directed by Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman. It premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2015, and played at Cannes, Telluride, and Venice Film Festival.

PBS Feature Documentaries: Our Time is Now (Chris Jonas, producer, composer, filmmaker, project director)

Made for PBS documentary in 2013 by Littleglobe and carried nationwide. Our Time is Now (directed and shot by Erin Hudson) was created in collaboration with hundreds of students across New Mexico. The film "is a character-driven, coming-of-age story that shares the lives of six rural New Mexican students as they work toward finishing high school, wrestle with personal challenges and pursue their dreams." Our Time is Now was carried to tens of millions of US homes and got ratings that consistently outperformed on Discovery, National Geographic, and A&E.

Inside/Outside (Chris Jonas, producer, filmmaker, project director)

Inside/Outside started as a set of filmmaking workshops and personal voice projects from 2013-14 within the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque, NM, working with a team of soon-to-be released men as they prepared to return to the community after incarceration. This project collaboratively documented the incredible challenges people face when trying to rebuild their lives after incarceration, accessing income and housing, addressing addiction, and seeking support, while struggling with the stigma of felony.

Split Estate (Chris Jonas, composer)

2009 Emmy Award winning feature documentary, Split Estate exposing the dirty side of hydraulic fracturing and natural gas. Narrated by Golden Globe winner, Ali Magraw, the film follows the citizens of Garfield County, CO, who find themselves in the path of an unstoppable rush to drill oil and gas.

"Split Estate is an eye-opening examination of the consequences and conflicts that can arise between surface land owners in the western United States, and those who own and extract the energy and mineral rights below. This film is of value to anyone wrestling with rational, sustainable energy policy while preserving the priceless elements of cultural heritage, private enterprise above-ground, and the precious health not only of people but the land itself."

Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico

"A must-see film for any elected official who deals with natural resources issues and the impact that oil and gas extraction can have on a community. Anyone who sees the film will be changed by the experience - for the better."

- Brian Egolf, New Mexico State Representative

Mark Chino (Chris Jonas, producer)

A 2016 seven-minute PBS documentary created for WNET/American Graduate, following Mark Chino, a 15-year old student from the Santa Ana Pueblo (Tamaya) in New Mexico, who attends Bernalillo High School, the film bridges two worlds: Chino's rural Tribal community which provides him with a unique sense of self, the Keres language and a broad set of community responsibilities (tending fields, preparing for dances), and the many expectations, conflicting ethics, and duties as a student within the US Public School system. This film highlights the challenges Native students face in today’s world.

Selected Discography

Jonas has appeared on more than 65 releases. To see a full list, view his AllMusic page.

Eeyahdi, Goggle Saxophone Quartet, 2021

Thollem's Astral Traveling Sessions, Thollem / Santistevan / DeFoe / Hutchinson / Jonas, 2021, Astral Spirits

Pentet, Pentet, 2020

These Times, Ornetc, 2020

Almeda (To Matie), Cecil Taylor, 2012, FMP

Corona, Cecil Taylor & Sunny Murray, 2012, FMP

Galore, Bing, 2004

Adventure Reality, Amitosis, 2002

The Vermilion, Chris Jonas' The Sun Spits Cherries featuring Myra Melford, 2001, Hopscotch

Ensembles Unsynchronized, Chris Jonas Quintet, 2000, NewSonic Records

The Sun Spits Cherries, Chris Jonas’ The Sun Spits Cherries, 1999, Hopscotch Records

Child King Dictator Fool, Great Circle Saxophone Quartet, 1997, New World Records

Echo Echo Mirror House (NYC), Anthony Braxton, 2011, Catalog #: NBH035

GTM (OUTPOST) 2003 Composition 255 & 265, Anthony Braxton, Chris Jonas & Molly Sturges, 2010, Leo Records

Septet (Pittsburgh) 2008, Anthony Braxton, 2008, Catalog #: NBH001

Almeda, Cecil Taylor, 2005, FMP

Mass for the Healing of the World, William Parker & the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, 2004, Black Saint

Alto Quartets, James Fei, 2004, Organized Sound

Light of Corona, Cecil Taylor, 2003, FMP

Tentet (Paris), Anthony Braxton, 2001, Catalog #: NBH037

The Sun Spits Cherries (with Joe Fiedler, Chris Washburne, Andrew Barker), 2000, Hopscotch

Tentet (Wesleyan) 2000, Anthony Braxton, 2000, Catalog #:NBH013 NBH014

Tentet (Antwerp) 2000, Anthony Braxton, 2000, Catalog #:NBH009.1 NBH009.2

Tentet (Wesleyan) 1999, Anthony Braxton, 1999, Catalog #: NBH020 NBH021

Trillium R: Shala Fears for the Poor (Opera), Anthony Braxton, 1999, Catalog #: BH008

Sax Quintet (Middletown), Anthony Braxton, 1998, Catalog #:NBH006.1 NBH006.2

Sax Quintet (NYC) 1998, Anthrony Braxton, 1998, Catalog #: NBH038

Three Orchestras (GTM) 1998, Anthony Braxton, 1998

Ensembles Unsynchronized (with James Fei, Cuong Vu, Joe Fiedler, Kevin Norton), 1998, Newsonic

Four Compositions (Washington, D.C.) 1998, Anthrony Braxton, 1999

Two Compositions (Trio) 1998, Anthrony Braxton, 1998

Composition 169 + Ghost Trance (Ljubjiana), Anthony Braxton / The Slovenia National Radio Orchestra, 2001, Leo Records

Mayor of Punkville, William Parker's "Little Huey" Orchestra, William Parker, 2000, Aum

The Way of the Saxophone, Brooklyn Sax Quartet (C. Jonas, Sam Furnace, David Bindman, Fred Ho), 2000, Innova

The Hollow World, Assif Tsahar’s Brass Reeds Ensemble, 1999, Hopscotch Records

Full Circle Suite, Joe Fonda Quintet (C. Jonas, Joe Fonda, Gebhard Ullman, Taylor Ho Bynum, Kevin Norton), 1999, CIMP

Vision Vol. I: Vision Fest. ‘97 Compiled "Hoang", William Parker's "Little Huey" Orchestra, 1998, Aum

Vision Vol. I: Vision Fest. ‘97 Compiled, "Conduction #72", Butch Morris, 1998, Aum

Sunrise on the Tone World, William Parker's "Little Huey" Creative Music Orchestra, 1997, Aum

Child King Dictator Fool, Great Circle Saxophone Quartet, 1997, New World Records

Flowers Grow in My Room, William Parker's "Little Huey" Creative Music Orchestra, 1994, Centering

American Works for Balinese Gamelan Orchestra, Evan Ziporyn/Nyoman Windha’s "Kekembangan"(for sax quartet and Balinese Gamelan Orchestra), Gamelan Sekar Jaya, 1993, New World Records

Awards and Honors

Winner of the 2007 New Visions/New Mexico Award for the video component of Memorylines commissioned by The Santa Fe Opera and first performed at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, NM.

Along with partner Molly Sturges, Jonas received the 2008 United States Artists Award in music and media as Simon Fellow.

Winner of the 2012 Meet the Composer/Commissioning USA Award (a project of the New York State Council on the Arts) for GARDEN, an ongoing series of live music and transmedia works.

Awarded a commission from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Commission Grant in 2011 for The Gulf (between you and me) with The Crossing Choir.

References