JONATHAN BROWN
Jonathan Brown, viola
Jonathan Brown was born in Chicago in 1974 and began to play the violin at age four. He first played the viola as a chamber musician at age 12 and began to study properly at the University of Illinois with Michael McClelland. After studying at the Eastman School of Music with Heidi Castleman, Jonathan received his Bachelor’s Degree from Rice University, where he studied with Martha Strongin Katz. He received a Master’s Degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Karen Tuttle and was the recipient of a Beebe Foundation Grant to work at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Thomas Riebl and Veronika Hagen. Jonathan was greatly influenced by master classes with Ferenc Rados, Andras Schiff, Donald Weilerstein, Miriam Fried, Rainer Schmidt, Diemut Poppen and Victoria Chiang.
Jonathan has been invited to participate in many festivals, including the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove, La Loigntaine, the Steans Institute at Ravinia, the Taos School of Chamber Music, Yellow Barn and the Aspen Music Festival. He has collaborated as guest violist with the Miro and Zemlinsky quartets, Kandinsky Trio and has performed the complete cycle of Mozart Viola Quintets with the Kuss Quartet of Germany. Jonathan spent a season playing with the Camerata Salzburg and previously appeared as principal viola of the Juilliard Orchestra and New Juilliard Ensemble.
Jonathan served as Teaching Assistant to Thomas Riebl in Salzburg and is now Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at the Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya. He joined Cuarteto Casals in 2002 and has subsequently performed in the most important halls throughout Europe, North America, Latin America and Japan. The quartet records exclusively for the Harmonia Mundi label, where he can be heard in renditions of quartets by Arriaga, Debussy, Zemlinsky, Mozart, Ravel, Toldrá, Turina and Brahms.