Jonathan Sturm

Dr. Jonathan Sturm is the longest-serving concertmaster in the Des Moines Symphony’s history, and the 2024-25 season is his 33rd as concertmaster.  He has appeared as a soloist with the orchestra ten times, including most recently with principal cellist Julie Sturm, performing Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in October 2022, and he has performed nearly all the major concertmaster solos with the symphony, last season being featured in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. During his 33 years in Des Moines, Jonathan has also served as concertmaster of the Des Moines Metro Opera and the Des Moines Brandenburg Ensemble. 

Besides his violin performing, Jonathan is also a world-touring violist. For 19 years he performed as a violist in the Ames Piano Quartet with concerts in Russia, Cuba, South Africa, and across the United States and Canada. He has been heard on St. Paul Sunday and Performance Today radio broadcasts and has recorded 11 compact discs on labels including Dorian, Sono Luminus, Fleur de Son, and Albany. His audio/video project entitled Fire and Romance—on which he arranged, conducted, performed, produced, and edited solo and accompanied violin repertoire—was a silver medal winner in the Global Music Awards in 2014.

Jonathan was a founding member of the Belin String Quartet in 2000, performing summer concerts with the ensemble for three years in Des Moines. He rejoined the ensemble from 2018-22, performing on both violin and viola. He has taught private lessons to numerous violin and viola students in Central Iowa many of whom have won regional competitions and continued their studies at reputed conservatories of music. He was the recipient of the Iowa String Teacher Association’s Leopold LaFosse outstanding studio teacher award in 2018. 

Jonathan has presented at numerous national conferences and at universities on music success strategies, financial planning for musicians, assessment tools for the private lesson, stage fright, performing with new colleagues, and Baroque performance practice. His articles in peer-reviewed journals range from violin pedagogy to higher education administration; he has written encyclopedia entries on various musical topics for Salem Press, and is on the editorial board for the Journal of Performing Arts Leadership in Higher Education. As Professor of Music at Iowa State University from 2002-2023, he was the recipient of an outstanding teaching award in 2009 and an outstanding service award in 2017. He also served as president of the Iowa State University Faculty Senate twice, in 2016 and 2019. In 2022, Jonathan was recognized by the university with one of its highest honors, a Morrill Professorship recognizing career distinction in teaching, research, and service.

Jonathan first became a professional orchestra musician at age 15, joining the second violins of the Norfolk Symphony, which has since been renamed the Virginia Symphony. His undergraduate training came from Oberlin Conservatory; he holds two Masters degrees (violin performance and musicology) from The Eastman School of Music, and a Doctorate from Indiana University, where he studied with renowned concertmaster Josef Gingold. Prior to assuming the concertmaster chair in Des Moines, Jonathan was acting concertmaster of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra. 

The violin Jonathan plays was made in Turin, Italy in the 1780s by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini. It is unique in that Guadagnini originally created a small viola, which was later resized to turn it into a violin in 1828.

Jonathan has been a member of the Des Moines Symphony since 1991.

Jonathan has been a member of the Des Moines Symphony since 1991.