Biography
Job Title: Accompanist
Courses Taught: BA (Hons) Music (Classical)
Specialisms: Piano accompaniment, Historically-Informed Performance of 19th Century Chamber Music with Piano, Organ
Jonathan Gooing graduated with a B.Mus (Hons.) from the University of Sheffield in 1996, where he studied piano with Yolande Wrigley.
Whilst an undergraduate, he was awarded the Sir Thomas Beecham Music Scholarship, the Julian Payne Scholarship, the final year recital prize and the piano accompaniment award. In 2007 he gained a Master of Music degree researching accompaniment techniques and performing Schubert’s song-cycle Winterreise.
Jonathan is well-known throughout the north of England as a soloist, chamber musician and accompanist and has played for Jean Rigby, Claire Rutter, Stephen Gadd and Roderick Williams, with whom Jonathan recently performed Winterreise in a Schubert project for Music in the Round in Sheffield.
In recent years, Jonathan has accompanied the leading contemporary song specialist Sarah Leonard in workshops and concerts in various venues in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Other recent accompaniment work has included master classes by Nicolai Znaider, Heinrich Schiff, David Pyatt and Miklos Perenyi amongst others. As a rehearsal pianist and repetiteur he has worked with the BBC Singers (Gilbert & Sullivan project at BBC Media City, Salford) as well as with Sarah Connelly, John Mark Ainsley, Rebecca Evans and the composer John Rutter.
Jonathan was accompanist and repetiteur for the large-scale Scunthorpe community opera ‘Cycle Song’, part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, winner of a Royal Philharmonic Society award. He is also pianist with the professional chamber orchestra Hull Sinfonietta and their chamber ensemble, ‘The Portumnus Ensemble’. Jonathan is actively involved in the Historically Informed Performance of 19th century chamber music with piano in the Meiningen Ensemble. In addition, a CD of music for flute and piano with Martyn Shaw on historical instruments was released in July 2016 on the Omnibus Classics label. Other recent highlights have included a performance of Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes with his wife, soprano Clare Wheat and pianist Malcolm Martineau.
In addition to his work as an accompanist at Leeds Conservatoire, Jonathan is the Academic Coordinator for Music at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln and an accompanist at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.
As an organist, Jonathan has performed in the Cathedrals of Lincoln, Sheffield, Durham, Ripon and York, as well as playing the organ in Symphony Hall, Birmingham. He has also played organ continuo in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the Halle Orchestra and Choir conducted by Sir Mark Elder in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.
In 1999 Jonathan won the Incorporated Society of Musicians/Yamaha 'Birmingham Accompanist of the Year' Award.
