British-born JONATHAN LEATHWOOD, one of few acclaimed guitarists to perform
on six-string and ten-string guitars, has been described as “a genius” by Classical Guitar,
and a musician of “remarkable talent and singular artistry,” by the Musical Times of
London.
Jonathan has performed at the International Festival of the Classical Guitar at West Dean,
UK, the Nürtingen Festival in Germany, London’s Wigmore Hall (with flautist William
Bennett), the Almeida Festival, the Cheltenham Festival (with cellist Steven Isserlis), and
the Aldeburgh Festival (with the contemporary music group Jane’s Minstrels). He has
given recitals in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy and Turkey, and at numerous
venues in the United States. In November 2011, Jonathan performed a solo recital at
Wigmore Hall, the first of an illustrious series of concerts he will give in association with
The Julian Bream Trust that will explore a repertoire of rarely heard music of the late
20th century, and offer several world premières. Included in the distinguished audience
were Julian Bream and John Williams.
Equally known as a collaborator with both performers and composers, Jonathan
Leathwood has recorded two albums with the legendary flutist William Bennett (more
information), and recorded and broadcast with elite cellists Rohan de Saram and Steven
Isserlis. He performs regularly with Denver cellist Richard von Foerster, and pianist
Heidi Brende Leathwood, and has teamed up with award-winning flutist, Christina
Jennings, to form the Jennings-Leathwood Duo. With Jennings and violist Mathew
Dane, he is a member of the Lefthand Canyon Trio. Jonathan’s commissions from
composers such as Param Vir, Stephen Goss, Robert Keeley and Chris Malloy have
pushed the boundaries of both six- and ten-string guitars. His recordings of Dodgson,
Goss and Malloy are available on the Cadenza label.
In 1988, Jonathan was a string finalist in BBC Television’s Young Musician of the Year
competition. Since then he has won awards from a number of bodies, including the Park
Lane Group, the Countess of Munster Trust, the Myra Hess Trust, the Holst Foundation,
the Eric Falk Trust, and the Ian Fleming Trust. He was the first guitarist to record a
recital for BBC Radio 3’s Young Artists’ Forum. He has twice performed in the Park
Lane Group’s Young Artist Series at the Purcell Room in London. One of these concerts
involved an exciting collaboration with the Indian composer Param Vir, whose four-
movement work Clear Light, Magic Body was dedicated to him and later published
by Novello. He has also premiered works by Robert Keeley, Chris Malloy, Stephen
Goss, Mervyn Cooke, and Rodolfo Betancourt. As a ten-string player he is particularly
associated with the innovative and striking music of Maurice Ohana.
Jonathan Leathwood writes and lectures on a range of topics from Bach to Elliott Carter.
In 2001 he conceived and edited Guitar Forum, a new scholarly journal for the classical
guitar published in the United Kingdom by the European Guitar Teachers’ Association
(EGTA UK). The previous year, he was the British delegate at EGTA’s international
conference in Cambridge, England, where he gave a lecture on analysis and performance.
He has a PhD from the University of Surrey and a Bachelor of Music from King’s
College London. He was later invited back to King’s to teach Music Analysis and
Techniques of Musical Composition, before eventually moving to the United States in
1998. His principal teachers in guitar have been Gordon Crosskey, Richard Wright, Paul
Galbraith, Ricardo Iznaola and the pianist and conductor George Hadjinikos.
Jonathan Leathwood holds teaching positions at the Lamont School of Music, University
of Denver, and at the College of Music, University of Colorado at Boulder.