Jonathan Kramer

Bio

Dr. Jonathan C. Kramer is Teaching Professor in the Music Department at North Carolina State University, and Adjunct Professor of Ethnomusicology at Duke University. As a cellist, he has performed as principal of the Tucson Symphony and as a member of the San Francisco Opera and Ballet Orchestras and the North Carolina Symphony. Among his teachers are Aldo Parisot, Gordon Epperson, Raya Garbousova, David Wells, Madeline Foley, and Maurice Gendron.

He has performed extensively as recitalist and chamber musician throughout the U.S. as well as in Russia, India, Korea, Canada, Austria, Bulgaria, U. K., Switzerland, and Italy. He has performed with The Mostly Modern series of San Francisco, Mallarme Chamber Players, Duke University Encounters Series, the Piccolo Spoletto Festival, Raleigh Chamber Music Guild; and presented solo concertos with a number of regional orchestras. He has recorded for Albany Records, and Soundings of the Planet, and teaches at Chamber Music on the Hill (CMOTH) in summers at Converse College. His “An Homage to Pau Casals for cellist and narrator” has been presented at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, the 92nd St. Y in NYC, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and elsewhere.

As ethnomusicologist, Dr. Kramer has been awarded Senior Fulbright Fellowships at Banaras-Hindu University in India and at Chosun University in Kwangju, South Korea. He has lectured on global issues in music and aesthetics in the United States, the U. K., Korea, India, China, Japan, Suriname, Uganda, and for the Semester at Sea program. Dr. Kramer holds advanced degrees from Duke and the Graduate School of the Union Institute where he completed a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology and Performance Studies in 1994 with a dissertation on traditional Korean music.

He is co-author, with colleague Dr. Alison E. Arnold, of the World Music e-Textbook What in the World Is Music? (Routledge Textbooks, 2016).

Area(s) of Expertise

Ethnomusicology, cello performance