Jonathan Schranz is a freelance conductor based in London.
With a background in jazz trumpet playing, music education and outreach work, solo singing and a decade of professional church music experience, Jonathan enjoys a diverse career which takes him from parish churches to high security prisons on a regular basis.
He is Director of Music at St George’s Metropolitan Cathedral, Southwark, where he oversees the Cathedral Music Department and conducts the mixed choir of choristers and nine professional Cathedral Lay Clerks. The choir, largely made up of state-educated primary school children from the local area, provides music for all of the major celebrations in the church year, including those celebrated by the Archbishop. He also directs the Cathedral Consort, an SATB choir made up of teenagers from the local area. He is also director of the Southwark Singing Programme, the Archdiocese of Southwark’s music education programme which works in numerous Catholic schools each week. In recent years the Cathedral choirs have made two commercial CD recordings and given regular BBC broadcast performances.
Jonathan is the Conductor of The Purcell Singers, an award-winning London chamber choir, having spent three years as their Associate Conductor. The choir is best known for its performances in the film and television industry, having appeared on trailer soundtracks for films including King Kong, War of the Worlds, and Madagascar 2. Their latest CD, When David Heard, was released in 2019 to critical acclaim, and they have performed in all of the major London churches and concert venues.
A firm believer in the transformative social impact of choral music, Jonathan is a co-founder and the Head of Development for the charity Sing Inside, which delivers singing workshops in prisons and secure institutions across the country. His Master’s thesis, exploring the benefits of choral music within a prison chaplaincy, has been presented at the Universities of Leicester and Oxford.
Jonathan is a practitioner council member of the Association of British Choral Directors and a tutor and area team member for the Royal School of Church Music.
Previous positions include Musical Director to the University of Greenwich, Conductor of Brentwood Choral Society, Victoria Children’s Choir, and ten years as a Section Leader for the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain.
He studied choral conducting at the Royal Academy of Music where he was awarded a Distinction along with numerous prizes. Prior to this he read music at Churchill College, Cambridge, graduating with first class honours in 2015.