About

Jonathan Cziner (silent C, rhymes with diner or minor) is an American composer whose music combines colorful harmony and texture with nostalgic lyricism, creating sound worlds that range from dark and mysterious to vibrant and exuberant. His music has been praised for its “brilliant timbral effects and contrasting moments of resonance and delicate filigree” (Theater Jones), “daring harmonic explorations” (Dallas Morning News), and “individual voice and the knowledge and technique to convey ideas in a striking and kaleidoscopic manner” (Chicago Classical Review).

Cziner’s music has been performed by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and St. Gallen Sinfonieorchester, as well as leading student and youth ensembles including the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra, Interlochen Philharmonic, Juilliard Orchestra, and New York Youth Symphony. He has collaborated with conductors including Christian Reif, Ruth Reinhardt, Michael Repper, David Robertson, Alexander Shelley, and Osmo Vänskä, and with performers including violinist Stella Chen; cellists Julian Schwarz and Juliette Herlin; harpist Emily Levin; guitarist Colin Davin; and pianists George Fu, Steven Masi, and Mika Sasaki.

In 2018, Cziner received a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the William Schuman Prize for the most outstanding score at the BMI Composer Awards. He was also awarded consecutive Palmer Dixon Prizes in 2017 and 2018 for the most outstanding work composed at The Juilliard School. During the 2022–23 season, he served as Composer-in-Residence with the Illinois Philharmonic, composing three new works for the orchestra, including his first symphony, Celestial Symphony.

Cziner is the Artistic Director of Dallas’s Voices of Change, a pioneering new music ensemble founded in 1974 and dedicated to championing the work of living composers. As an educator, he teaches composition at the University of North Texas and heads the composition program of the Charles Ives Music Festival in Danbury, Connecticut. He also works closely with the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra, where he leads composition seminars and mentors young composers.

Cziner is also active as a composer for film and other media. He has collaborated with writer/director Nora Unkel on numerous projects, including her feature film A Nightmare Wakes, and is currently composing music for a documentary directed by Alec Isaacs about Houston-based artist Ellen Orseck.

His current projects include Wood Music, an environmentally charged, evening-length chamber work commissioned by Voices of Change and scheduled to premiere at the Trinity River Audubon Center in Dallas. The work explores humanity’s relationship with the natural world through an unusual theatrical structure in which the performers gradually exhaust their wooden instruments until the music itself disappears. Recent and upcoming performances include repeat performances of Wanderlust by the Davin-Levin Duo and Rear-view by the Waco Symphony Orchestra.

Cziner holds a Bachelor of Music degree from New York University, where he studied with Justin Dello Joio, and Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Robert Beaser. He lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Emily Levin, Principal Harpist of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.