Jonathan Freeman-Attwood CBE

From 1991 to 1995, he served as Dean of Undergraduate Studies at the Academy then as its Vice-Principal and Director of Studies for 13 years. In 2001, he was conferred Professor of the University of London with a personal chair. For over a quarter of a century Jonathan has held senior posts at the Academy, during which time he has played a leading role in launching pioneering programmes and fostering major international relationships. He has been instrumental in nurturing a 20-year collaboration with The Juilliard School in New York, as well as masterminding several major artistic and professional development initiatives: of particular significance is the Academy’s recording label, which has released over 50 titles (all of which he has produced) including those on Linn Records since 2012.

Key achievements include assembling a roster of eminent international musicians as permanent staff or visiting professors. A close involvement in the artistic strategy of the Academy has led to the inauguration of several successful concert series, including with the Kohn Foundation a 10-year project to perform all of Bach’s sacred and secular cantatas, extended into ‘Bach the European’ in 2019, co-curated with John Butt. During Jonathan’s Principalship, the Academy was granted Degree Awarding Powers from the Privy Council (2012) and has embarked on a number of transformational capital projects, including two new practice facilities and, from 2015, the building of the award-winning Susie Sainsbury Theatre and Angela Burgess Recital Hall, completed in 2018. He has also led the Academy’s Bicentenary fund-raising campaign leading to five new endowed posts, scholarships and several educational projects, including the Sir Elton John Global Exchange Programme.

Jonathan is a Fellow of King’s College London (where he is a Visiting Professor) and has been awarded fellowships from Royal Northern College of Music, Royal College of Music and Tokyo University of the Arts. He is on the Advisory Board of the Academy of Ancient Music, Vice-President of the National Youth Wind Orchestra of Great Britain, Patron of London Youth Choirs and a trustee and Chair of the Artistic Advisory Committee of Garsington Opera. He is also a trustee of Christ Church Cathedral Oxford Music, the British Library SAGA Trust, the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) and the Countess of Munster Trust, having served previously for a decade on the board of Young Classical Artists’ Trust (YCAT) and as a trustee of the University of London from 2010 to 2016.

As a trumpet soloist, Jonathan has released 14 solo albums, the majority with Linn Records, and published over 100 arrangements, including all the material from his commercial recordings. Attracting wide critical acclaim for their musical originality, these recordings have achieved an effective reimagining of the trumpet as a chamber instrument in reconstructions of works from c 1600 to the 20th century. Initially with John Wallace and Colm Carey in 2003, he recorded The Trumpets that Time Forgot (Rheinberger and Elgar) before conceiving a series of programmes with pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar: La Trompette Retrouvée (2007), Trumpet Masque (2008) which won High Fidelity’s ‘Recording of the Year’ in 2008, Romantic Trumpet Sonatas (2010), A Bach Notebook for Trumpet (2012), The Neoclassical Trumpet (2014), and An English Sett for Trumpet (2018). He also recorded the world premiere of Gabriel Fauré’s Vocalises in 2013, accompanied by pianist-scholar Roy Howat, whose edition was published by Peters.

Most recently, Jonathan collaborated with composer Thomas Oehler on a sonata for trumpet and piano ‘after Richard Strauss’ in a publication for Boosey & Hawkes and an album, The Viennese Trumpet with Chiyan Wong (2020) and Handel for Trumpet with Anna Szałucka and Tom Freeman-Attwood for Linn Records (2024). In 2021, he released a recording of four Classical-style sonatas ‘by’ and ‘after’ Mozart, created by Professor Timothy Jones, drawing on varied styles and periods in Mozart's music as well as torsos and sketches. In 2025, he then released a recording of his own edition of the Bach Cello Suites for trumpet on Deux-Elles, and a score published by Faber in their Edition Peters series.

In May 2020, BBC Music Magazine wrote: ‘Freeman-Attwood’s brilliantly recorded high lines and judiciously vibratoed singing prove companionable for the whole duration’. Jonathan is a Series Editor for Resonata Music’s The Re-Imagined Trumpet, in which, among other pieces from his catalogue, newly configured sonatas by Schumann, Mendelssohn and Fauré have been published.

Jonathan has produced over 250 commercial discs for many of the world’s most prestigious independent labels including Naxos, BIS, Chandos, Hyperion, Harmonia Mundi USA, Linn, Channel Classics and AVIE. His productions have won major awards, including several Diapasons d’Or, Gramophone Awards, and numerous nominations over the last 20 years with artists including Rachel Podger, the Cardinall’s Musick, Trevor Pinnock, Phantasm, La Nuova Musica, I Fagiolini, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Daniel-Ben Pienaar and various leading cathedral choirs – among them St Paul’s Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. He produced the final volume of Andrew Carwood’s Byrd Edition (Vol 13) for Hyperion, which won the prestigious Gramophone ‘Recording of the Year’ in 2010. Jonathan’s recent producing credits for the Academy include Bach Partitas (arr Oehler) under Trevor Pinnock (Linn, 2023), and a recording of Stravinsky (to follow a recording of Soldier’s Tale with Oliver Knussen in 2017) with Barbara Hannigan (Linn, 2024) in joint ensembles with The Glenn Gould School and The Juilliard School respectively. A Nielsen recording of Hans Abrahamsen’s arrangements of the 6^th Symphony and Commotio under Ryan Wigglesworth will be released in autumn 2025.

As an educator and scholar, Jonathan is active as a lecturer, critic and contributor to journals (including Gramophone since 1992) and publications such as The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001, 2nd edition) and Cambridge University Press’s Companion of Recorded Music, and also to BBC Radio 3. His collection of interviews with significant musical figures was published in the 2023 volume Musically Speaking, including exchanges with, amongst others, Dame Janet Baker, Sir Colin Davis, Semyon Bychkov, Christoph von Dohnányi and Oliver Knussen. Jonathan is an established authority on Bach interpretation, particularly in challenging and refocusing historical perspectives on performance practices. He regularly writes for Warner, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and other major record labels.

He was appointed CBE in the New Year’s Honours List in 2018.