Jonathon Posthuma

Jonathon is a freelance composer in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His musical style seeks to combine lyricism, evocative imagery, and intense emotional contrasts, yet maintains clarity in form and function at their  deepest levels. He recently received his Masters in Music Composition from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he studied with Stephen Dembski and Laura Schwendinger. His orchestral work, Fili di Perle received 3rd Prize in the Karol Szymanowski International Composers Competition in Katowice, Poland and was premiered in March 2016.  Other recent large ensemble works include An Isthmus Aubade and Concerto Grosso No. 1 for strings, percussion, and piano, commissioned and premiered by the Madison Area Youth Orchestra and Clocks in Motion in June 2015. Among his awards are 2011 BMI Student Composer Award for Five Studies for Piano: Two Pencils and a Hymnbook and an award for sound design from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for his incidental music for The Glass Menagerie. ​ Jonathan is an active member of the Twin Cities choral community and has sung with VocalEssence Chorus, Kantorei, and impulse (MPLS). Several of his choral works have received premieres by these ensembles, including two composed for VocalEssence as part of their ReMix program, designed for emerging composers of choral music, which were premiered at the ACDA National Festival in March 2017 and at Minnesota’s ACDA Festival in November 2017.