Composer and conductor Jonathan Sheffer has had a diverse musical career spanning the worlds of classical, opera, dance, and film and television. Born in New York City in 1953, Sheffer graduated from Harvard University, where his teachers included Leonard Bernstein, and later attended The Juilliard School and Aspen School of Music.
Sheffer’s range of works comprises television and feature film scores, works for orchestra, solo piano, concertos, musicals, and short operas. His work was the focus of a Guggenheim Works & Process series event in October 1999. His opera, Blood on the Dining Room Floor, received the Richard Rodgers Production Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was produced off-Broadway in 2000. He has had fellowships at both Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony, and in 2003 he was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.
He made his conducting debut with the San Diego Symphony in 1991. In 1995 Sheffer founded the Eos Orchestra in New York as a laboratory of new programming ideas; and in 2001, he was invited by a group of musicians and arts donors from Cleveland to lead a new organization with a similar mission. The result was Red {an orchestra}, which performed similar programs for six seasons.
In addition to Eos and Red, Sheffer has conducted orchestras, opera, dance and at various festivals, including the New York City Opera, The Spoleto Festival (Italy), and the Ravinia Festival. He has conducted the American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera, the Mark Morris Dance Group at BAM, and in 1996, he led the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with the Martha Graham Dance Company at the Edinburgh Festival.
As part of his activities in arts and culture philanthropy and political action, Sheffer has been an active political fundraiser and advocate for the arts in government. He has served on the board of Directors of VH1 Save The Music, the New York City Opera, and was the appointee of the New York City Council to the Board of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He is currently a Councilmember of the New York State Council on the Arts. www.jonathansheffer.com
