Jonathan Stern Editor & Author

Jonathan Stern is an independent musicologist who studied musicology at CUNY and trombone at both the Eastman and Manhattan Schools of Music. He counts among his many wonderful trombone teachers members of the New York Philharmonic, Rochester Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera Orchestras. For many years, he was active as a free-lance low brass player in the New York tri-state area, performing with many orchestras, concert bands and brass bands as well as in many shows. Highlights of his life as a low brass player include performances at the Interlochen, Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals. He has also been a devoted music teacher and has served on the faculties of several schools in the New York City school system as well as at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Dr. Stern was at one point a board member of the Gustav Mahler Society of New York and, as a huge fan of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, recently participated in Episode 16 of theshining237.com, a podcast devoted to Kubrick’s cinematic masterpiece of horror, The Shining. This is his first book. As a scholar, his primary interest is twentieth century music with an emphasis on American symphony orchestras and the orchestra canon as it evolved during the course of the century. In addition to Mahler, his favorite composers include somewhat conservative American composers like Howard Hanson and Samuel Barber, maverick composers Edgard Varèse, John Cage and Morton Feldman, and, thanks largely to his work on the Lewisohn Stadium Concerts, centrist composers George Gershwin and Aaron Copland. He resides in Westchester County, New York. BA in English (Music Minor), University of Rochester, 1992 MM in Orchestral Performance (Trombone), Manhattan School of Music, 1995 PhD in Musicology, CUNY, 2009 MS in Library Science, Long Island University, 2013