Biography
Jonathan Pasternack conducts symphony orchestras, opera and ballet internationally. Since 2015, Pasternack serves as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra. His career includes appearances in over a dozen European countries, with such ensembles as the London Symphony Orchestra, Residentie Orkest of The Hague, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, among many others.
Pasternack has over thirty opera and ballet productions to his credit and has conducted numerous world and regional premieres of new compositions, including works by Sofia Gubaidulina, Olivier Messiaen, Joel-François Durand, David Jones, Eric Ostling, Sarah Bassingthwaighte, Jesús Rueda, and Gloria Wilson Swisher.
His debut recording with the London Symphony Orchestra on the NAXOS label was hailed by music critics, who praised its "wonderfully nuanced, colorful" Suite from the Miraculous Mandarin by Bartók (Michael Ullman, Fanfare magazine) and "risk-taking, profound" Brahms First Symphony (Bernard Sherman, Inside Early Music). Since 2022, Jonathan Pasternack's collaboration with producer Fernando Arias and the ARIA Classics label has resulted in several recordings: Totentanz, featuring the two Liszt piano concerti and Totentanz, with pianist Josu de Solaun and the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra; Tides of Dance, an album of concertos by Strauss and Lalo, with violinist Franziska Pietsch and the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada; the premiere recording of Sarah Bassingthwaighte's Concerto for Double Bass (commissioned by Pasternack and the Port Angeles Symphony), with soloist Stephen Schermer and the London Symphony Orchestra; and an album of Italian verismo arias, with soprano Kristin Vogel and the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra.
Born and raised in New York City, Pasternack began his training on violin, cello, and piano. He won a trombone scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music at the age of sixteen and made his conducting debut at the age of eighteen while an undergraduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He won Second Prize at the Sixth Cadaqués International Conducting Competition, in Barcelona, Spain, as the only American invited to compete, and received top distinctions at the Aspen, Brevard, and David Oistrakh Music Festivals. After a brief apprenticeship, Pasternack was invited by James De Preist to become his assistant conductor with the Oregon Symphony. Jonathan Pasternack has assisted De Priest in London and Rotterdam, Neeme Järvi in Berlin, London and The Hague, and Gerard Schwarz in Seattle. Pasternack's mentors have also included Jorma Panula, Hans Vonk, and Peter Erős.
Jonathan Pasternack has taught conducting, chamber music and orchestral performance as a visiting professor at music schools and conservatories in the United States and Europe. As a scholar, he published the first complete English translation of "Brahms in der Meininger Tradition," an influential source document relating to the performance practice of the four symphonies and Haydn Variations.
Samples of his work can be found on Youtube by clicking here.