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JONATHAN PASTERNACK has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, Residentie Orkest of the Hague, Oregon Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Saint Petersburg Festival Orchestra, Romanian National Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, North Czech Philharmonic, Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic, Oregon Ballet Theatre and the Aspen Concert Orchestra, among others. Winner of the Second Prize at the 2002 Cadaqués International Conducting Competition in Barcelona, Spain, he has received distinctions at the Aspen Music Festival, Brevard Music Festival, and the David Oistrakh Festival in Estonia.

Born and raised in New York City, Jonathan Pasternack received his early training in piano, violin and violoncello. At age sixteen, he entered the Manhattan School of Music on a scholarship and then transferred to MIT to study astronomy and political science. He holds graduate degrees in music from the University of Washington, where he was a conducting student and protégé of Peter Erös. His other teachers have included Neeme Järvi, David Zinman, Murry Sidlin and Jorma Panula. He has been assistant to Neeme Järvi with the Hague Residentie Orkest, James DePreist with the Oregon Symphony, and Hans Vonk with the Saint Louis Symphony.

Pasternack’s conducting credits for the stage include productions of Puccini, Tosca; Strauss, Jr., Die Fledermaus; Britten, The Turn of the Screw; Massenet, Cendrillon; Poulenc, Dialogues des Carmélites; Ravel, L’enfant et les sortilèges; Verdi, Falstaff; Humperdinck, Hänsel und Gretel; Stravinsky, The Rake’s Progress; Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker; and Rossini, Il barbiere di Siviglia; Weill, Street Scene; Loewe, My Fair Lady; and Porter, Kiss Me, Kate. He led the world premiere in Seattle of Gloria Wilson Swisher’s opera The Prestigious Music Award and the Paris regional premiere of Robert Clerc’s opera on Persian themes, A l'ombre du grand arbre.

The debut recording by Jonathan Pasternack with the London Symphony Orchestra will be released next year on the Naxos label. The Grammy-award winning production team was led by producer Michael Fine and balance engineer Wolf-Dieter Karwatky. This recording will be the first commercial release made with fully digital microphone technology created by Neumann and Sennheiser. The repertoire includes Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 and the suite from The Miraculous Mandarin by Béla Bartók.

Dedicated to music education, Jonathan Pasternack has taught orchestral performance, conducting, music theory and chamber music at Pacific Lutheran University, the University of Washington, and as a guest instructor at various other colleges and high schools in the United States and abroad.