Jonathan Charles Griffith, acclaimed conductor, educator, and co-founder and Artistic Director of Distinguished Concerts International New York (DCINY), died on June 29, 2026, at the age of 77.

Over a career that spanned more than five decades and five continents, Maestro Griffith devoted his life to a singular belief: that music-making is at its most powerful when it brings people together. Under his artistic leadership, DCINY united thousands of musicians and choral singers from around the world in performances at the most storied venues in America, including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. To the countless musicians who stood before his baton, he was far more than a conductor; he was a mentor, a champion, and a friend.

Jonathan’s musical life began in the American Midwest. A native of St. Louis and a proud graduate of Shawnee Mission South High School in Kansas, he earned a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Kansas, a Master of Music Education from Wichita State University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in conducting from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. There he studied with the renowned choral conductor Dr. Eph Ehly, whom he treasured as a mentor and a lifelong influence, saying that “much of who I am today as a conductor goes back to the early days of my doctoral studies … and specifically with my daily contact with Dr. Ehly.” It was in Kansas City, in 1982, that Jonathan founded the Kansas City Chorale, shaping it from a group of student singers into a serious professional ensemble; under later leadership it would go on to become one of the nation’s foremost recording choirs and a multiple Grammy Award winner. He remained deeply proud throughout his life of having given the Chorale its start. In a full-circle moment years later, the Kansas City Chorale joined DCINY in 2009 as the first choir to perform in the newly renovated and reopened Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, a homecoming that bound the ensemble of his student days to the company he would go on to build.

Jonathan made his Carnegie Hall conducting debut in 1989 and went on to lead well over 200 performances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.

An ensemble that carried his name and his ideals accompanied him throughout his career. In 1987, Jonathan founded the Jonathan Griffith Singers, a chamber choir of 24 professional singers in Portland, Oregon. Under his direction, it grew into a flexible ensemble of 80 to 120 amateur and professional singers drawn from across the United States and Canada, beloved for its appealing, accessible programming. Members of the Jonathan Griffith Singers performed in some of the world’s finest concert halls, among them Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, the Rudolfinum in Prague, the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome, and the Duomo di Pisa.

As co-founder of DCINY, the company he and General Director Iris Derke established in 2007 and launched with its first concert in January 2008, Jonathan helped to build one of the most vital and ambitious concert enterprises in the choral world. Over nineteen years, DCINY has presented hundreds of performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and celebrated stages abroad, uniting choirs, orchestras, soloists, and audiences from every corner of the globe, and collaborating with many of the foremost conductors and composers of our time. It was on these stages that Jonathan gave voice to the works and the artists he believed in.

Alongside the great works of the classical repertoire, he was a passionate advocate for countless living composers and for ambitious new works. He was a champion and advocate for composers Sir Karl Jenkins, Eric Whitacre, Ola Gjeilo, Joseph Martin, Heather Sorenson, and Christopher Tin among a long list of accomplished artists. Among the many premieres he led:

• United States premieres (Sir Karl Jenkins): Stabat Mater, Gloria, The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, Te Deum, Song of the Earth, and Symphonic Adiemus.

• North American premieres (Sir Karl Jenkins): Cantata Memoria: For the Children and One World.

• World premieres, through the DCINY Premiere Project: Christopher Tin’s The Drop That Contained the Sea; Ola Gjeilo’s Twilight Mass; Sir Karl Jenkins’s Sing! The Music Was Given; Carol Barnett’s Mortals and Angels; two concertos by Dinos Constantinides written for DCINY co-founder Iris Derke, one for flute and one for flute and harp; and works by Eric Funk, Seymour Bernstein, and Robert Convery.

His enduring life project was conducting Sir Eugene Goossens’s reorchestration of Handel’s Messiah, a performance The New York Times called “Ravishing” and “the first Messiah of the season.” In 2019, he realized a longtime dream under the DCINY umbrella, recording Sir Eugene Goossens’s orchestration of Handel’s Messiah with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Jonathan Griffith Singers, and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain at London’s famed Abbey Road Studios.

In the years that followed, he continued to conduct to sold-out halls abroad, including in Zagreb, Croatia, and a celebrated program of Sir Karl Jenkins’s music with the Thüringer Philharmonie in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. In July 2025, he conducted the closing concert of the Zagreb Classic before an audience of more than 15,000, featuring the world premiere of King Tomislav by composer, colleague, and dear friend Matej Mestrovic. Jonathan was instrumental in the collaboration that brought this glorious work to life.

Additionally, as founder and music director of the Distinguished Concerts Orchestra, and as the guiding force behind DCINY’s mentoring program for conductors, Jonathan shaped not only performances but the careers and lives of a rising generation of musical leaders. His work carried him across the globe: to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City; the European Symphony Orchestra in Spain; orchestras throughout the Czech Republic; the Bialystok State Philharmonic in Poland; and the Croatian Chamber Orchestra and Zagreb Philharmonic, among many others.

For all his travels, Jonathan’s heart was always in Oregon. He spoke constantly of its beauty and delighted in inviting friends and colleagues to come and see it for themselves, above all by opening his home in Lake Oswego. He loved the state’s rugged Pacific beaches and the ski slopes of Timberline on Mt. Hood, and counted Blakeslee Vineyard among his favorite places, with its sweeping view of Mt. Hood, its exceptional wines, and, better still, its good company. Wherever his work took him around the world, he was a proud ambassador for Oregon, and for the home he cherished there. It was in Oregon, too, that he most loved daily life: regular outings to the ballet with his stepdaughter, Zadie, and time spent with dear friends in the Portland area.

Jonathan is survived by his beloved stepdaughter, Zadie, and by his loving family of musicians around the world, his troubadours, in the thousands: singers, musicians, artists, and lovers of the arts who were touched by Jonathan’s musicianship, his magic, his love, and the connection he created through the power of music.

In the days since his passing, remembrances have poured in from artists across the world, and they return again and again to the same truth: that Jonathan took the time to connect with each person he met, and to bring them to a new level of what they do. He heard not only the music but the musician, and he gave every singer and player the sense that what they did mattered. That gift, for human connection as much as for artistry, is what has resonated most in the tributes that have flooded in from every corner of the globe.

Jonathan’s January concerts of the music of Sir Karl Jenkins became a cherished DCINY tradition, opening each season since 2008, a celebration he returned to conduct every year. It is fitting, then, that DCINY will dedicate its January 18, 2027, concert at Carnegie Hall as a Celebration of his Life, a program he built and loved, now carried forward by those who loved him. On that stage and throughout the hall, the family he gathered over a lifetime will come together once more: the conductors, soloists, musicians and singers from every corner of the globe, joined by an audience of the countless others he touched, all raising their voices to celebrate his extraordinary contribution to our musical world.

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A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, August 29, 2026, from 2:00 to 6:00 PM, at Blakeslee Vineyard Estate, 20875 SW Chapman Road, Sherwood, Oregon 97140. To attend, please email Diane@mission-systems-inc.com by August 15, 2026. DCINY will also honor Jonathan’s life on January 18, 2027, at Carnegie Hall with the music of Sir Karl Jenkins. Details will be announced at www.DCINY.org. Concert tickets on sale from October 20 at www.carnegiehall.org. All who loved Jonathan are warmly welcome at both gatherings.

Tributes, photos, and memories of Jonathan may be shared at the River View Cemetery Funeral Home tribute page.