Educator

Jonathan is a professor at Monmouth University in the Music and Theatre Arts Department.

Music Courses include: American Music Traditions; Blues to Rap; Ear Training I and II; Independent Studies; Music Appreciation; Music for the Child; Secondary Methods;

and Roots, Rock, Reggae.

Jonathan earned his Ph.D. in Music Education at NYU under Dr. David J. Elliott. He holds a Master’s of Music in Composition/Arranging and a Bachelor’s of Music in Jazz Performance on trombone and upright/electric bass from William Paterson University. There he had the opportunity to study with:

John Mosca-Trombone

Steve LaSpina and Marcus McLaurene-Bass

Cecil Bridgewater, Rich DeRosa, Jim McNeely, and Bill Mobley-Composition/Arranging

Education Publications

-Students as the Educator: A Student-centric Model for Curriculum Development (The Routledge Companion to Creativities in Music Education, 2023)

-The Power of Rap in Music Education: A Study of Undergraduate students’ Original Rap Creations (BJME, 2023)

-Music Composition as Pedagogy: A Qualitative Case Study of Undergraduate Music Student’s experience with Composition (Dissertation-NYU)

-Composing Your Meaning (Visions of Research in Music Education, 2020)

Conference Presentations

(Click on titles to view)

International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, May 2024

Presenter: Original big band composition, “Blues Bop”


Suncoast Music Education Research Symposium XIII at University South Florida, Tampa, FL, January 2021

Presenter: “Students as the Educator: A Student Centric Model for Curriculum Development”


Association for Popular Music Education at New York University, New York, NY, June 2019

Presenter: “Composing Your Meaning through Hip-Hop and its Role in Education”


Visions of Research in Music Education at Westminster Choir College, Princeton, NJ, May 2019

Presenter: “Composing Your Meaning”

Doctoral Research

Music Composition as Pedagogy: A Qualitative Case Study of Undergraduate Music Students’ Experience with Composition

(Click on titles to listen)

Angela-“Bomba De Puerto Rico”

Cecilia-“Over the Meadow”

Woody-“Cavacha Rhythms”

Brandon-“The Mango”

Uma-“Gaudiya Vaishnava Kirtan”

Adele-“Electric Sinulog”

Esther-“Klezmer Composition”