Born in Chicago in 1974, Jonathan Brown began his musical studies at the age of four and later began playing the viola in various chamber music ensembles. He studied with Heidi Castleman, Martha Strongin Katz, and Victoria Chiang, before completing his advanced diploma at the Juilliard School in New York with Karen Tuttle. Jonathan Brown continued his studies at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg with Thomas Riebl and Veronika Hagen. He has participated in masterclasses with Diemut Poppen, Sylvia Rosenberg, and Donald Weilerstein and has been deeply influenced by Ferenc Rados and György Kurtag.
Since 2002, he has been a member of the Casals Quartet, with whom he plays in the most important halls in the world. The quartet records exclusively for Harmonia Mundi, a label with which it has released an extensive amount of repertoire from Boccherini to Kurtag.
In addition, Jonathan Brown has been invited by other chamber ensembles, such as the Tokyo, Kuss, Zemlinsky, Quiroga, and Miro quartets, and the Kandinsky Trio. As a performer committed to contemporary music, Jonathan is a founding member of Funktion and has often played as a soloist with the BCN216, performing works by Morton Feldman and Luciano Berio.
Jonathan is currently a professor of viola and chamber music at the Escola Superior de Música de Barcelona and an assistant professor at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía, and is frequently invited to give masterclasses in Europe and America.