Woody, Jonathan
Jonathan Woody
Jonathan Woody is a versatile and dynamic musician who maintains an active schedule as a performer and composer in New York and across North America. Cited by the Washington Post for singing “with resonance and clarity,” Woody is in demand as a bass baritone soloist, appearing regularly with historically informed orchestras including Boston Early Music Festival, Apollo's Fire, Pacific MusicWorks, Bach Collegium San Diego, Trinity Baroque Orchestra and
New York Baroque Incorporated. In the 2021-2022 season, he served as Artistic Advisor for the Portland Baroque Orchestra, curating a program of 17th century German music for voices and orchestra. An accomplished chamber musician, Woody often performs as a member of the GRAMMY®-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street, where he has earned praise from the New York Times for his "charismatic" and "riveting" solos. He has also recently performed in collaboration with Kaleidoscope Ensemble, Les Délices, Seraphic Fire, Byron Schenkman and Friends, and TENET Vocal Artists.
Woody’s compositional voice blends 17th and 18th-century inspiration with the minimalism
and socially conscious subject matter of today. Since 2020, he has received commissions
from Apollo’s Fire, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Chanticleer, the Handel and Haydn
Society, the Cathedral Choral Society of Washington, D.C., and the Five Boroughs Music
Festival, among others.
As a sought-after new music proponent, Jonathan has participated in premiere performances of several leading composers' works, including Ted Hearne's The Source (2014), Ellen Reid's p r i s m (2019 Pulitzer Prize-winner), Missy Mazzoli's Breaking the Waves (NYC premiere, 2018), and Du Yun's Angel's Bone (2017 Pulitzer Prizewinner).
In recent seasons, Woody has appeared at the Staunton Music, Portland Bach, Carmel Bach, and Oregon Bach Festivals, the American Bach Soloists Academy, and at the Aldeburgh Festival at Snape Maltings. He has also been seen on the operatic stages of Opera Lafayette, American Opera Projects, and Beth Morrison Projects. Woody can be heard on the Choir of Trinity Wall Street’s GRAMMY®-nominated recording of Israel in Egypt, released in 2013 on the Musica Omnia label, as well as on ACRONYM’s Cantica Obsoleta (Olde Focus Recordings), Boston Early Music Festival’s St. Matthew Passion of J. Sebastiani (RadioBremen), New York Polyphony’s Roma Æterna (BIS Records), and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street’s Missa Gentis Humanae (Musica Omnia).
Jonathan is committed to racial equity in the field of the performing arts, and currently serves on Early Music America’s Task Force for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access. Presently living on traditional Lenape lands now known as Brooklyn, NY, he holds degrees from McGill University and the University of Maryland, College Park.