Pianist Jonathan Bass enjoys a multi-faceted career as soloist, chamber musician, and piano professor. Internationally, he has performed in China, Israel, Japan, Lithuania, Poland and Russia. Concerto engagements have included appearances with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall on four occasions, and the North Carolina Symphony at An Appalachian Summer Festival. His hundreds of recitals have brought him to major music centers throughout the United States, including New York, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Washington D.C., Miami, Palm Desert, and Tanglewood. Bass gave his New York debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall as first-prize winner of the 1993 Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition. New York Concert review wrote, “A technical presence to be reckoned with … soaring with a feeling of lyrical discovery.” A Steinway Artist, he has been featured on National Public Radio's "Performance Today," the McGraw-Hill Artists Showcase on WQXR in New York, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts series on WFMT in Chicago, and on WGBH in Boston. Of his first piano CD, Jonathan Bass plays Bach, Chopin, Scriabin & Pinkham, Gramophone Magazine wrote: "Superbly played Bach and Chopin with haunting music by Pinkham. He has technique to burn but prefers to drive the music with colour and a striking ability to connect inner harmonic details without seeming academic. Elegant, commanding playing." Of his second CD, Larry Bell's "Reminiscences and Reflections," Music Web wrote, "Jonathan Bass plays superbly throughout and proves an eminent and convincing advocate of Bell's consistently fine and attractive music.”

Jonathan Bass’ 2023-2024 engagements included solo and duo recitals and master classes at the Vivace Vilnius International Music Festival in Lithuania and at Penn State University Center for the Performing Arts; concerto appearances with the Quincy and Melrose Symphony Orchestras in Massachusetts; solo recitals on the Artistry in Action series at Boston Conservatory and Core Memory Music in Rhode Island; a Boston Duo performance with violinist Tatiana Dimitriades on the Wolf Concert Series in Newton; and two Boston Symphony Community Chamber Concerts in Methuen and at Tanglewood. He also appeared as orchestral keyboardist with the Boston Symphony in five performances under conductor Andris Nelsons at Tanglewood and Symphony Hall.

Collaborative highlights have included guest appearances with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players at Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood and at Jordan Hall in Boston, and recitals with violinist Joseph Silverstein in Salt Lake City and at Jordan Hall in Boston. He has appeared at the Chichibu International Music Festival in Japan, the Maui Chamber Music Festival in Hawaii, and, in Massachusetts, the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Festival and the Duxbury Music Festival. As the pianist and a founding member of the Walden Chamber Players, founded in 1997, he performed on a variety of chamber music series, such as the Calgary Pro Musica Society in Alberta, Canada, Dumbarton Concerts in Washington, D.C., Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music in Syracuse, New York, Friends of Chamber Music in Troy, New York, Utica Chamber Music Society in Utica, New York, deBlasiis Chamber Music series in Glens Falls, New York, Howland Chamber Music Circle in Beacon, NY, Chamber Music Society of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, Gettysburg Concert Association in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Sedona Chamber Music Festival in Arizona. Other Walden highlights include an all-Penderecki program at the Miller Theatre in New York City; a concert at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City; a series of performances at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts; a residency at the University of Idaho; and multi-year visiting chamber ensemble residencies at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas; Concord Academy, Worcester Academy; and the Nantucket public schools. Walden’s first recording, “A Voice Gone Silent Too Soon: The Music of Gerhard Schedl,” was praised by Gramophone magazine for its “superb performances.” Walden’s second CD, “SunThreads,” traversed the chamber the music of Augusta Read Thomas, and its third, “The Evolution of the American Sound," featured music by Aaron Copland and Ned Rorem, among others.

Bass and his wife, Boston Symphony violinist Tatiana Dimitriades, perform frequently throughout New England as the Boston Duo. Bass has also given numerous performances with many members of the Boston Symphony, including concertmaster Malcolm Lowe and principal cellist Jules Eskin.

He has also performed as orchestral keyboardist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in works by Bartok, Debussy, Mahler, Orff, Henze, Messiaen, Respighi, and Stravinsky at Tanglewood, at Symphony Hall, at Carnegie Hall, and on two European tours under conductors Roberto Abbado, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Bernard Haitink, Andris Nelsons, and Seiji Ozawa. Other conductors he has worked with include Charles Dutoit, Louis Lane, Keith Lockhart, Ludovic Morlot, Marcelo Lehninger, and Thomas Wilkins.

Among the awards he has received are First Prize in the 1989 American Pianists Association Beethoven Fellowship Competition, First Prize in the 1984 American National Chopin Competition, First Prize in the 1983 National Arts Club Competition, Second Prize in the 1993 Washington International Competition, Second Prize in the 1983 Young Keyboard Artists Competition, and the Bronze Medal and Mozart Prize at the 1987 Robert Casadesus International Piano Competition. In 2021 he received the Clara Slater Memorial Award at New England Conservatory. At the age of 16 he was awarded the Charles Hayden Memorial Scholarship for Piano Achievement at the Juilliard School, where he studied for nine years in the Pre-College with Richard Fabre. As a teenager he spent four summers at Interlochen, as a student of Erno Daniel and Nelita True, and two summers at the Aspen Music Festival, as a student of John Perry. He later received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Juilliard as a student of Adele Marcus and Sascha Gorodnitzki. In 1977-78, he studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, a rare opportunity for an American at that time. He also studied at Oberlin College. He has a Doctor of Music degree from the Indiana University School of Music, where he studied with, and was teaching assistant to, Menahem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio.

Jonathan Bass is a Professor of Piano at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. He was the Chair of the Piano Department at the Boston Conservatory from 2008 to 2015, and he has been on the faculty since 1993. From 2006 to 2008, he was the Chair of the Piano Department, and at the Boston University School of Music, and Director of the Piano Program at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Previously he was an Assistant Professor at San Jose State University in California. For 30 years he has been on the faculty at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School and the Walnut Hill School. His students have won many competition prizes. He has given a multitude of master classes for music schools and music organizations throughout the country and around the world and frequently serves as a juror for national and international competitions.

Jonathan Bass is a Steinway artist.