Jonathan Bagg is Professor of the Practice at Duke University. His career with the Ciompi Quartet includes hundreds of concerts across the U.S. and around the world, as well as dozens of recordings. He is founding Artistic Director of Electric Earth Concerts in New Hampshire, and he directed the Monadnock Music festival from 2007-2011. As an Artistic Director, his programming has included many collaborations with composers, authors, poets, and choreographers resulting in a number of unique multi-media works.
Bagg has performed at the Portland and Sebago-Long Lake festivals in Maine, Detroit’s Great Lakes Festival, the Eastern Music Festival and the Highlands festival in North Carolina, and the Mohawk Trail and Castle Hill festivals in Massachusetts.
Since 2015 Bagg has been principal violist and soloist with the CityMusic Cleveland chamber orchestra. He appeared often with the Boston Symphony, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony, and the New Hampshire Symphony, where he was principal viola.
Bagg’s new CD of solo works for viola and piano by Marion Bauer, Ulysses Kay, and Margaret Bonds will be released in 2026 on New Focus records. His previous CD on the Albany label, titled “Elation,” brings together several works he commissioned, including a sonata and a trio by Duke colleague Stephen Jaffe, and a trio by Scott Lindroth. Other solo CDs contain music for viola and piano by Robert and Clara Schumann, and by the Viennese composer Robert Fuchs. Contemporary solo works by Robert Ward, Arthur Levering, Malcolm Peyton, and Donald Wheelock are on Bridge, Albany, Centaur and Gasparo Records.
Bagg was Chair of Duke’s Department of Music from 2019-2023. He directed the chamber music program from 2000-2019, and he has also served as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Performance. He holds an M.M. from the New England Conservatory and a B.A. from Yale.