Elkus, Jonathan.

Jonathan Britton Elkus (b. San Francisco, CA, August 8, 1931). Composer, arranger, editor, and teacher. He studied composition with Charles Cushing and William Denny at the University of California, Berkeley (BA 1953), with Ernst Bacon and Leonard Ratner at Stanford University (MA 1957), and with Darius Milhaud at Mills College (1957). He taught at Lehigh University from 1957 and to 1973 and became director of music at Cape Cod Academy in 1979. He presently teaches at the University of California, Davis. As an editor, Elkus has been closely associated with the music of Charles Ives. A vital interest in extending the repertory of concert bands has resulted in a number of compositions and numerous transcriptions. He owned several music publishing businesses, including the Overland Music Distributors in Albany, California which he and his wife, Micky, presently run.

Composer, music professor at Lehigh University, and bassoonist; b. 1931.

Jonathan Elkus, composer, teacher, bassoonist, was born in San Francisco in 1931. From 1957-1973 he was on the music faculty of Lehigh University.

Biographical Sketch

Jonathan Britton Elkus (b. San Francisco, CA, August 8, 1931). Composer, arranger, editor, and teacher. He studied composition with Charles Cushing and William Denny at the University of California, Berkeley (BA 1953), with Ernst Bacon and Leonard Ratner at Stanford University (MA 1957), and with Darius Milhaud at Mills College (1957). He taught at Lehigh University from 1957 to 1973 and became director of music at Cape Cod Academy in 1979. He has been guest conductor with concert bands throughout the USA.

As an editor, Elkus has been closely associated with the music of Charles Ives. He is editor of the Ives Society's critical edition of the Robert Browning Overture and is the author of Charles Ives and the American Band Tradition (1974/R1975). A vital interest in extending the repertory of concert bands has resulted in a number of compositions and numerous transcriptions, including Ives's A Son of a Gambolier and The Circus Band, and Berlioz's Grande Symphonie funébre et triomphale. Elkus's musical vocabulary draws on several 20th-century idioms, resulting in a highly individual style with strong definition of pitch and chord centers. -- New Grove Dictionary of American Music

Jonathan Elkus presently teaches at the University of California, Davis, and with his wife, Mickey, runs the Overland Music Distributors in Albany, California.