Biography

Organist Jonathan Dimmock is the Principal Organist at the Legion of Honor Museum, Music Director at San Francisco’s Swedenborgian Church and Congregation Sherith Israel, and he regularly appears with the San Francisco Symphony. A graduate of Oberlin and Yale, he was the only American to serve as organ scholar of Westminster Abbey, under the tutelage of Simon Preston. Continuing his career in the United States, he served three Episcopal cathedrals: Saint John the Divine (New York), Saint Mark’s (Minneapolis), and Grace (San Francisco). Mr. Dimmock lives in San Francisco, where, for more than twelve years, he was music director at Saint Ignatius Church.

Mr. Dimmock has recorded more than fifty CDs; he can be heard on the San Francisco Symphony’s Grammy award-winning recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas on SFS Media. His teachers and mentors include Olivier Messiaen, Gillian Weir, Jean Langlais, Peter Hallock, Haskell Thomson, William Porter, Thomas Murray, Ton Koopman, Harald Vogel, Naji Hakim, and Frédéric Blanc.

Mr. Dimmock’s numerous blog writings, vocation as a teacher, passion for communicating, and his personal focus have been the impetus for his founding of five nonprofit organizations, including American Bach Soloists, Artists’ Vocal Ensemble (AVE), and, most recently, The Resonance Project, which uses live music to transform conflict and find common ground. Through this project he has interviewed some of the greatest musicians in the world, all of whom share his excitement about the interface between music and neuroscience. The project has garnered attention from the United Nations, the US Department of State, and former US President Barack Obama.