Jonathan Pitkin (b.1978) was brought up in Edinburgh, and now lives in south London. He studied at the University of Oxford, the Royal Academy of Music, and on exchange at the Paris Conservatoire. In 2009 he completed a doctorate at the Royal College of Music, where he now teaches various courses relating to composition and academic studies at Junior Department, undergraduate and postgraduate level. His principal composition teachers have been Christopher Brown and Guy Reibel.

Jonathan’s music has been performed and commissioned internationally as well as at major venues across the UK, including the Huddersfield and Spitalfields Festivals. Performers have included the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Singers, members of the Philharmonia Orchestra (as part of the Music of Today series), and conductors Stephen Layton, Nicholas Cleobury and Martyn Brabbins. A number of his works have been broadcast by BBC Radio 3, including the orchestral pieces Mesh and Borrowed Time, and two of his choral pieces are published by Oxford University Press as part of the New Horizons series.

Jonathan’s research interests revolve predominantly around areas of overlap between composition and music psychology, particularly where these concern the workings of listener expectations, or the creation of illusions of one kind or another. Increasingly, this has involved writing for instruments which have been expanded or electronically reconfigured in some way: Con Spirito, for piano and Yamaha disklavier, was shortlisted for a British Composer Award in 2008, and was part of the official British selection for the ISCM World Music Days in 2014, while his more recent output includes works for circular piano and for quarter-tone alto flute. His published writings include contributions to the SAGE Encyclopedia of Music in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2014).