Hailing from Lake Jackson, TX timpanist Brian Jones joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1998. He departed in February 2011.



Biography:

Brian Jones began his professional career in Houston at the age of 16, playing drumset on small group engagements with some of the city’s leading jazz musicians. Later, while an undergraduate at the University of North Texas, Jones earned a position in the school’s renowned One O'clock Lab Band, and performed in the Dallas Jazz Orchestra. Upon graduation he won the Charlie Owen Memorial Scholarship to the Aspen Music Festival. As a fellowship graduate student at Indiana University, Jones performed as the timpanist of the Terre Haute Symphony, and played at the Tanglewood Music Center for two summers. He completed his schooling in the Professional Studies program with Alan Abel at Temple University.



After serving as Visiting Professor and Director of Jazz Studies at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, Brian Jones joined the New World Symphony in Miami Beach under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. While there, he joined the percussion chamber ensemble SouthBeat, whose global performing credits include a special concert for Prince Ranier in Monaco and a guest shot on NBC’s The Today Show. Also during this time, Jones toured and recorded with the Empire Brass. In 1998 Brian Jones performed with the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, and became the Principal Timpanist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra that same year. He served as percussionist and assistant principal timpanist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in the summer of 2004, where he also gave a clinic at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.



Brian Jones can be heard with the Empire Brass Quintet on two recordings, An Empire Brass Christmas and The Best of the Empire Brass . As a winner in the New World Symphony’s concerto competition, he performed Paul Creston’s Concertino for Marimba, and he made his concerto debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the summer of 2001, performing Harmonic Rhythm, by Russell Peck. Currently, Brian Jones also serves as an adjunct associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Music.