About this Artist
WARREN JONES frequently performs with many of today's best-known artists, including Barbara Bonney, Ruth Ann Swenson, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Denyce Graves, Stephanie Blythe, Håkan Hagegård, Olaf Baer, Bo Skovhus, Samuel Ramey, James Morris, and John Relyea. In the past he has partnered such great singers as Marilyn Horne, Kathleen Battle, Carol Vaness, Judith Blegen, Tatiana Troyanos and Martti Talvela. His collaborations have earned consistently high praise from many publications: the Boston Globe termed him "flawless" and "utterly ravishing"; the New York Times,"exquisite"; and the San Francisco Chronicle said simply, "His playing was a marvel, as always."
Mr. Jones has been featured in an interview with Eugenia Zuckerman on "CBS Sunday Morning" in which his work as a performer and teacher was explored, and he has appeared on television across the United States with Luciano Pavarotti. He has often been a guest artist at Carnegie Hall and in Lincoln Center's Great Performers Series, as well as the festivals of Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Caramoor. His international travels have taken him to recitals at the Salzburg Festival, Milan's Teatro alla Scala, the Maggio Musicale Festival in Florence, the Teatro Fenice in Venice, Paris' Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and Opéra Bastille, Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Cultural Centre in Hong Kong and theatres throughout Scandinavia and Korea. Mr. Jones has been invited three times to the White House by American presidents to perform at concerts honoring the President of Russia, and Prime Ministers of Italy and Canada-and three times he has appeared at the U.S. Supreme Court as a specially invited performer for the Justices and their guests. As a guest at the Library of Congress, Mr. Jones has appeared with the Juilliard Quartet in performances of the Schumann Piano Quintet. He was featured in the United Nations memorial concert and tribute to Miss Audrey Hepburn, an event which was telecast worldwide following Miss Hepburn's death.
Recent seasons have included his debut with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall (performing the Sextet of Ernst von Dohnanyi), performances with the Brentano Quartet (Schubert Trout Quintet), and an invitation to teach a master class at The Juilliard School under the auspices of the Marilyn Horne Foundation.
Several recordings with Mr. Jones have caught the public's ear: on BMG/RCA Red Seal, he is featured with Håkan Hagegård in songs of Brahms, Sibelius and Stenhammar in a recording which was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1999; on the Samsung Classics label, with Korean soprano Youngok Shin in A Dream, her first recital disc with piano; and for NPR Classics, a recital of spirituals with Denyce Graves, entitled Angels Watching Over Me. Other compact discs featuring Mr. Jones include: I carry your heart, with Ruth Ann Swenson on EMI, Every Time We Say Goodbye, with Samuel Ramey on SONY Classics, and Fauré Songs with Barbara Bonney and Håkan Hagegård on RCA Red Seal. A critically-acclaimed survey of the songs of Edward Grieg with Mr. Hagegård has also been issued by BMG/RCA Victor. Mr. Jones' recording of Copland and Ives songs with Mr. Ramey for Decca/Argo was also nominated for a Grammy Award; and he can be seen on the best-selling Deutsche Grammophon video/laser disc of his memorable Metropolitan Museum of Art concert with Kathleen Battle.
Mr. Jones is a member of the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, where highly gifted young artists work with him in a unique graduate degree program in collaborative piano. Each summer he teaches and performs at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. For ten years he was Assistant Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and for three seasons served in the same capacity at San Francisco Opera.
Mr. Jones is also a prominent musical jurist, having been a judge for the Walter Naumberg Foundation Awards, the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, Artists' Association International Fine Arts Competition and the American Council for the Arts. In the Spring of 1997 he joined the jury of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, at Mr. Cliburn's special invitation.
Born in Washington, D.C., Mr. Jones grew up in North Carolina and graduated with honors from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts-where he was recently honored with the Conservatory's Outstanding Alumni Award.