Jonathan Weiss is a composer and piano teacher based in New Haven, CT. When he was seven, his mother gave him a Casio piano keyboard for Christmas, and he discovered he could figure out tunes by ear. Since then, his passion for musical discovery has led him on many adventures.

Weiss earned a B.A. in Music, summa cum laude, from Yale, where he studied under Kathryn Alexander, Nathan Roberts, and Jeanine Tesori. He has won awards including the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Beekman Cannon Friends of Music Prize, and the inaugural 2024-25 Chauncey Fellowship, a program of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. His compositions have been performed at The Green Room 42, Woolsey Hall, and New England Conservatory. His long-time teacher Howard Frazin writes, “Jonathan aspires to be a composer in the old-school sense, as a creative artist who serves the expressive needs of his community.”

Weiss is passionate not just about musical composition but also about connecting to young people with disabilities. This journey began in teaching piano to his older brother, a nonverbal person who expresses himself through music. Registered with Vision Through Music, Weiss teaches blind, autistic, and other disabled students music. Weiss is also a volunteer composer for Hear Your Song and Sing Me a Story.

Weiss is composing an opera, teaching twenty-five piano students at Creative Music Center and Academy of Music for the Blind, and serving as a musician at Bethesda Lutheran Church and Yale Taizé.