Jonathan Jones will play the clarinet on any stage, whether it’s a concert hall or a club.
“I want to bring clarinet music into the rave,” Jones said.
Jones will perform Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, a piece that reflects his distinctive skill set, at Dallas Chamber Symphony’s November 8 concert at Moody Performance in the Dallas Arts District.
The Dallas native began playing the clarinet at age 10 when his Duncanville school told him he could choose between band and choir.
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“Well, the band does more field trips,” Jones said.
The clarinet proved to be a perfect fit for a musician interested in variety.
“I think clarinet really has the most versatile tone,” Jones said. “You can scream, and you be the most intimate, softest, most delicate ever. You can be agile and go crazy technically. The tone is so malleable.”
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Jones studied clarinet at Southern Methodist University under master teacher Paul Garner of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. As he graduated in 2008, Jones played Orpheus in Ricky Ian Gordon’s stage work, Orpheus and Euridice. He played 70 minutes from memory while acting and dancing. He played the role at Fort Worth Opera, Birmingham Opera, Dallas Voices of Change, Santa Fe New Music and the European premiere in Italy.
“That was one the landmark things I’ve done in my career, for sure,” Jones said.
Jones has played with the Las Colinas Symphony, The Dallas Opera and the Fort Worth Symphony. He has expanded his career beyond the classical genre, touring the globe and playing all kinds of music on clarinet and other specialty instruments like the Sumatran saranaui, Chinese hulusi and the slide didgeridoo.
Jones has performed at prominent world music festivals in China, Sumatra, Bali and Java as well as appearances in popular jazz festivals in Italy such as the Jazz in Campo Festival in Campo di Pietra, Molise. In 2018, Jones was featured as a soloist with the Taipei Chinese Orchestra in Taiwan. He has performed with artists such as Peter Gabriel, Idina Menzel, Balawan, Mohsen Namjoo, Mike Block and Poovalur Sriji as well as with Ehsan Matoori in their world music group Horoscope.
“I’m more than just a classical clarinetist. I can improvise. I can be a rock star. I started inventing my own things,” Jones said. “I’ll stand onstage with any group and just play tonight. I don’t have to know the music. I just stand up there and just shred the concert and make it better. That’s who I am.”
He has been playing with the Dallas Chamber Symphony since its founding in 2012 and is currently the orchestra’s Principal Clarinetist. He has been active in the Dallas Chamber Symphony’s community outreach, and he appreciates the orchestra’s diverse programming, performing everything from modern movie scores for silent movies to masterpieces of classical music.
“We do these cool, intimate chamber works that don’t need as many musicians, but it still has a great impact,” Jones said. “Our forte is that we’re very versatile.”
Copland wrote the Clarinet Concerto for Benny Goodman when clarinetists were the pop stars of the era. This piece requires classical virtuosity and jazz sensibilities.
“I don’t know if there are many better people to play this piece. With this Copland, you have to be able to get that jazz part of the piece out. There are too many square classical players out there that don’t improvise. They’ve never played jazz,” Jones said. “I actually have the experience to where I’m going to be taking this more raunchy than a lot of people would even think about. At the end, you have to channel the jazz scene. You have to know about what New York in the 1950’s, Rat Pack, smoked-out jamming. You’re jamming. You’re not playing the notes on the page. You’re showing a whole scene, a concept. You have to have fun with it.”
The piece showcases who Jones is as an artist.
“With Copland, I feel like I can bring myself out,” Jones said. “My goal is to show people all the versatility of the clarinet and how it can communicate in ways that can make you cry or make you dance or make you scared.”
Beyond the classical world, Jones is a DJ, composer and music producer known as Jon Jonez. He initially began DJing to make himself for more marketable as a musician and discovered a new stage to highlight the clarinet. He often plays the clarinet, saxophone or his Electronic Wind Instrument while DJing.
“I bring that part of the improvisation of jazz into the classical music, and I bring the technicality and virtuosity of the classical music into the jazz, and I bring all of that into electronic music,” Jones said.
With projects such as Apollos Flight, Electronic Instrument/DJ Duo with Marek Eneti, and Drum N Wind, and Electro/Acoustic duo with Jamal Mohamed, Jones is focused on changing the perception of the clarinet.
“I want to connect with a younger generation, bring my crazy classical cool stuff and show them, ‘Hey look, classical music is cool,’” Jones said. “I’m bringing the clarinet to the modern day in a different way than anybody else is.”
Learn more: Dallas Chamber Symphony
