Michael Jones | percussionist
Michael Jones is a percussionist and conductor based in Southern California. His work focuses on championing new pieces of the 21st century as well as works from the 20th century avant-garde. He is particularly interested in touch, resonance, and the enchanted currents of percussion objects. Composers he has worked closely with include David Macbride, Kevin Good, pluto bell, Scott Wollschleger, and Matt Sargent. He has performed at the LA Philharmonic’s Noon-to-Midnight Festival, The Ojai Music Festival, The Other Minds Festival, Monday Evening Concerts, The Dog Star Orchestra Festival, and the Hartford New Music Festival.
Photo by Steven Wade Adams
He’s completed residencies at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Alberta), The Nief Norf Summer Festival (Tennessee), and others. He’s appeared in the past as a member of the Hartford New Music Collective, the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra, the Other Minds Ensemble, the William Winant Percussion Group, Empyrean Ensemble, ECHOI Ensemble, and red fish blue fish. He regularly performs as member and co-founder of the flute/percussion duo Offscreen, with Alexander Ishov, and the piano/percussion project Duo Refracta, with Shaoai Ashley Zhang.
Michael's scholarship focuses on the intersections of 20th-century modernism, instrumental ontology, and continental philosophy. He has presented work at the Nief Norf Festival's Research Summit and the Transplanted Roots Percussion Research Symposium. He currently serves on the Percussive Arts Society's New Music/Research Committee. In 2024 he joined the executive committee of Transplanted Roots, and will help to produce its 2025 conference in Porto, Portugal.
As a performer and researcher of non-Western music, Michael has performed percussion music from Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, West Africa, and Iran, studying with Rogerio Boccato, John Amira, Joe Galeota, Shane Shanahan. Since 2018 he has studied and performed traditional and contemporary works from the classical Persian tradition. As a performer of music for tombak, daf, and santur, he took part in the inaugural concert of the UCSD Persian Music Ensemble, featuring guest vocalist Siamak Shajarian, in 2023.
Michael holds a BM from The Hartt School / University of Hartford where he studied with Benjamin Toth, and a DMA from the University of California San Diego, where he studied with Steven Schick and Keyavash Nourai.
Michael endorses Marimba One vibraphones and marimbas.