Chris Jonas
Chris Jonas (born September 3, 1966, in Newport Beach, California) is a Santa Fe, New Mexico-based composer, conductor, soprano and tenor saxophone player, filmmaker, and video artist.
Jonas has performed, recorded, and toured around the world with many musicians including TILT Brass.., the Crossing Choir, Del Sol String Quartet, Butch Morris, Assif Tsahar, James Emery, Myra Melford, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, and Anthony Braxton
As a filmmaker, Jonas was co-composer and associate producer for the feature documentary Sembene! which premiered at Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals. He was producer, program director and composer for the 2013 PBS / American Graduate feature documentary “Our Time is Now.”
In 2025-26, he co-producer, director and editor for Dream Baby Dream with the Jazzfest Berlin Film Labs. Dream Baby Dream premiered April 2026 at the Liminal Dance Film Festival in Washington DC, winning the InSeries COUNTERPOINT Award.
Since 1997, Jonas has acted as a board member of the Tri-Centric Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to the ongoing work of Anthony Braxton, and is currently acting there as Vice President
In 2014, Jonas worked with Anthony Braxton in partnership with the Tri-Centric Foundation to create a projected video environment for Braxton's third major production of an opera, Trillium J (The Non-Unconfessionables), which premiered at Roulette, in Brooklyn, NY. For the 2015 Torino Jazz Festival and the 2019 Berlin Jazz Festival, Jonas served as a conductor for Braxton's 63-person orchestra project, Sonic Genome, a six-hour-long piece.
Jonas and artist/composer Molly Sturges co-founded a non-profit in New Mexico named Littleglobe, an arts and social justice organization. Jonas was Little Globe’s Executive Director from 2016-2025. Also with Sturges, Jonas is the recipient of the 2008 United States Artists Award in music and media as a Simon Fellow. He is a winner of the 2012 Meet the Composer/Commissioning USA Award for his multi-media immersive installations titled, GARDEN.
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