Edward Elwyn Jones

Conductor, vocal coach, and keyboardist Edward Elwyn Jones is the Gund University Organist and Choirmaster at Harvard University, a post he has held since 2003. Mr. Jones directs the music program in the Memorial Church in the midst of Harvard Yard and leads the 180-year old Harvard University Choir in its daily choral services, broadcasts, tours, commissions, and recordings. Mr. Jones is also Music Director of the Harvard Radcliffe Chorus, the Lowell House Opera (New England's longest-running opera company), and is a frequent collaborator with Yale’s Schola Cantorum. He has led opera productions with Iceland’s Reykjavik Summer Opera Festival, New England’s Intermezzo Opera, Lowell House Opera, and the Harvard Early Music Society. Mr. Jones has worked alongside William Christie, John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan, and Gil Rose.

During his time at Harvard, Mr. Jones has overseen the publication of a new university hymnal, the installation of two new pipe organs in the Memorial Church, and has commissioned works from some of America’s most prominent contemporary composers, including Daniel Pinkham, Alice Parker, David Conte, and Mark Miller. A native of Wales, Mr. Jones studied music at Cambridge University, where he was Organ Scholar of Emmanuel College, and served as conductor of three university orchestras. He received his Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting from Mannes College of Music in New York City, where he was the recipient of the Felix Salzer Memorial Award.

As a vocal coach, Mr. Jones specializes in baroque opera (period and modern performance), bel canto opera, and contemporary opera; and is a diction coach in English, French, German, Italian (and Welsh!)