Biography

Jonathan (Jon) Salamon is a harpsichordist, pianist, and composer based in New York, NY. He has performed at festivals in the U.S. and abroad including the International Baroque Institute at Longy, Cambridge, MA, and at the Virtuoso & Bel Canto Festival in Lucca, Italy, among others. Jonathan has performed in masterclasses for artists such as Jordi Savall, Pierre Hantaï, Luca Guglielmi, Peter Sykes, and Ketil Haugsand. While in-residence at Yale, he played continuo for the Yale Baroque Opera Project, assisted in tuning at Yale’s Collection of Musical Instruments, and was a frequent collaborator on chamber music concerts.

Jonathan is currently the Principal Harpsichordist/Keyboardist with the Chamber Orchestra of New York, with whom he made his sold-out Carnegie Weill Hall debut in 2021 as soloist in Bach’s D-minor harpsichord concerto. A Fulbright Scholar, he studied and performed eighteenth-century music of Amsterdam’s Sephardic synagogue. In 2019, he was the Third Prizewinner at the 44th annual Mathieu Duguay Early Music Competition in Laméque, Canada.

A passionate educator, Jonathan is an adjunct assistant professor at Purchase College. He taught secondary harpsichord lessons at Yale and was a Teaching Assistant for a graduate course on the history of early music. He has presented lecture-recitals at the Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments at Yale; for the joint conference of the American Bach Society and the Mozart Society of America; Harvard’s Graduate Music Forum conference (2020); and the Historical Keyboard Society of North America’s conference (2018), among others. In fall 2023, with his colleague Alexander Nicholls, he spearheaded the first-ever conference devoted to galant schemata called “Galant Schemata in Theory & Practice,” featuring major scholars and performers over a virtual format.

With his colleague Felice Doynov, flutist and arts advocate, he co-founded HEAR Classical. HEAR stands for History, Equality, and Artistic Representation, and it is a resource and concert platform for music by women and minority composers throughout western music history. After an inaugural concert at Yale in April 2018, HEAR Classical partnered with the United Nations Chamber Music Society and in May of 2018 presented a concert at All Saints Episcopal Church in New York, NY, with musicians from Yale and Juilliard, and featuring speakers from the United Nations.

Jonathan was born in New York City and grew up in Connecticut. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree cum laude from NYU, majoring in Piano Performance and with a minor in Law and Society; his principal teachers included Seymour Bernstein (piano) and Dr. Morwaread Farbood (harpsichord). Jonathan holds Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Harpsichord Performance from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Arthur Haas. He counts among his mentors Menno van Delft, with whom he studied during his Fulbright at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.