Jon Deak

Bass

JON DEAK’s compositions have been heard worldwide at venues ranging from Mountain tops, and concert halls, to city streets and kindergartens. His orchestral works have been performed by such institutions as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago, National, Minnesota, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Colorado Symphonies, and many of the world’s leading chamber ensembles. He is one of the few composers who holds a major symphonic position: he is the Associate Principal Bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and is also that orchestra’s Creative Education Associate. Recently Deak completed an acclaimed three-year appointment as Composer-in-Residence with the Colorado Symphony under the Meet The Composer reseidency program, including affiliation with the Colorado Children’s Chorale and the Denver Public Schools. While in Colorado, he reorganized the “pre-concert event” concept and founded a contemporary music series which brought together Colorado composers of jazz, symphonic, blues, country, indigenous, and electronic music. Perhaps his most intensive work in Colorado besides his composing was — and is — his involvement with public school children: It was his dream to enable grade school kids to write music for the symphony orchestra just as naturally as they would paint, draw or write words. This concept has borne unquestionable fruit and has attracted wide attention. Through a grant from ASCAP, he is spreading the idea to other composers and schools. Jon Deak was educated at Oberlin College, The Juilliard School, The University of Illinois and, as a Fulbright scholar, at the Conservatorio di of Santa Cecilia in Rome. His mentors and inspirations range from John Cage and Pierre Boulez to Leonard Berstein, rap and Walt Disney. His training also includes work in the visual and theatrical arts, and he was active in the performance art movement in the New York’s SoHo. He now teaches a composing class in the New York City public schools that his own children attend. His love of nature often takes him into the wilderness, where he has led and co-led climbing expeditions into the Canadian Rockies, Alaska and the Himalayas, and he performs benefit concerts to aid Enviromental and Arts groups.