Chris Jonas is a Berlin and Santa Fe-based composer, filmmaker, saxophone player, and video artist.
As an instrumentalist and composer/conductor, he has performed, recorded, and toured internationally with many of today’s most adventurous artists, working extensively with Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, William Parker, Del Sol String Quartet, TILT Brass, the Crossing Choir, and others.
Jonas is a United States Artists Fellow and a winner of the 2012 Meet the Composer/Commissioning USA Award for GARDEN, his ongoing series of live music and transmedia works.
Chris Jonas is also a filmmaker. He was associate producer and composer for the feature documentary SEMBENE! which premiered at Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals.
He was producer, program director and composer for the 2013 PBS feature documentary OUR TIME IS NOW, Screened nationally for 16 months across PBS/CPB American Graduate
program reaching tens of millions of US homes.
Most recently, he was lead of the creative team, director, editor and producer for DREAM BABY DREAM with the Jazzfest Berlin Film Labs program, creating a music-driven film with professional and community based artists for the 2026 Jazzfest Berlin. The resulting film DREAM BABY DREAM premiered April 2026 at the Liminal Dance Film Festival in Washington DC, winning the InSeries COUNTERPOINT Award and has screened at festivals worldwide.
He is Co-Founder and former Executive Director of Little Globe, the New Mexico arts and social justice non-profit, and is Vice President of the Tri-Centric Foundation, an organization committed to the work and legacy of Anthony Braxton. In 2019, Jonas was conductor for Braxton’s 6-hour, 63-person orchestra project, Sonic Genome, at the Jazzfest Berlin
Jonas has received commissions for large-scale music and video performance projects with many international artists, including the Del Sol String Quartet, Duo B Experimental Band, the Crossing Choir, with ensembles and musicians in Berlin, Portugal and Ireland, the Chicago Improvisors Group, and with numerous international venues, including SITE Santa Fe, the Lensic, the Santa Fe Opera, Center for New Music, Roulette, Lincoln Center, Knitting Factory, Z-Space in San Francisco, Triskel Arts Center in Cork, Ireland, Gropius Bau in Berlin, Germany, and the National Theater and Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan.
"Chris Jonas’ remarkable composed suites [are] subtle breakthroughs and fantastic journeys."
- Ann Powers, New York Times
"Chis Jonas [is a] a gifted and original avant-garde soprano saxophonist and composer."
- Harvey Pekar, Cleveland Scene
"Jonas’ imaginative, provocative compositions and arrangements that really stick out and make him one to watch."
- Peter Margasak, JazzTimes
"Jonas cultivates a fluid relationship in his music between spontaneous gestures and planned ones; elaborately scored structures and dense improvisations can coexist within an album-length composition, sometimes as contrasting elements and sometimes as simultaneous events."
- Bill Meyer, Chicago Reader