Jonathan Leshnoff is quickly winning an international reputation as one of America’s most gifted young composers. The New Jersey-born composer is riding the crest of a wave of popularity that has resulted in international performances of his works by the Philadelphia, Baltimore, IRIS, Buffalo, Kyoto, Curtis Institute, Kansas City, Extremadura Orchestras, among others, and chamber music performances by the Da Capo Chamber Players, Concertante, and the Twenty-First Century Consort. The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts recently commissioned him for a full-length Oratorio, to be premiered by The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia under the baton of Roberto Minzcuk during the Kimmel Center’s inaugural International Arts Festival in 2011. During the same season, he will look forward to two other new works. The Philadelphia Orchestra, under the direction of Charles Dutoit, will premiere his flute concerto written for Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Flutist, Jeffrey Khaner, and a new orchestral work, Starburst, will be premiered by Marin Alsop and The Baltimore Symphony.

The first of three recordings devoted exclusively to Leshnoff’s music has been released on the Naxos “American Classics” label. It includes his Violin Concerto, performed by violinist Charles Wetherbee and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Markand Thakar, and his String Quartet No. 1, performed by the Carpe Diem String Quartet. Other releases feature his Symphony No. 1 conducted by Michael Stern and the Iris Chamber Orchestra, and Leshnoff’s chamber music.

Leshnoff’s upcoming projects include a 50-minute oratorio commissioned by the Kimmel Center, the performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra of a flute concerto especially composed for Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Flutist Jeffrey Khaner, a commissioned work for the Baltimore Symphony and co-commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony and the Extremadura Orquesta of Spain, and a commission for a concerto for orchestra and two percussionists.

Named by the Baltimore Sun as a 2006 “Artist to Watch”, Jonathan Leshnoff’s music has been lauded by the Kansas City Star as “a diaphanous orchestral fabric of beautiful transparency,” by the Memphis Commercial Appeal as “a fluid, thoughtful work, superbly textured and unafraid to be intellectual,” and by the Baltimore Sun as “remarkably assured, cohesively constructed and radiantly lyrical.” The New York Times declared in a November, 2008, review that “the afternoon’s keenest discovery was Mr. Leshnoff.”

Currently an Associate Professor of Music at Towson University in Maryland, he can be found running around local Baltimore playgrounds with his children.