Previous positions include Visiting Assistant Professor of Music (Orchestra and Musicology), Alma College, Alma, MI 2018-2020; Visiting Instructor of Music (Orchestra and Music History), Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA 2017.

In summer 2017, Jonathan Spatola-Knoll took up residence at the Salzburg Festival as an awardee of the Vienna Philharmonic’s Ansbacher Fellowship for Young Conductors. He holds a master’s degree in conducting from UC Davis, where he has acted as the assistant conductor for both the symphony orchestra and chorus, and will soon complete his doctorate. He has also served on the faculty at Whitman College as director of orchestras. He has conducted the Richmond Symphony, the Pierre Monteux Festival Orchestra, Whitman College Symphony Orchestra, UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, UNT Symphony Orchestra, University of Oregon Symphony Orchestra, Oregon Camerata, and the Northwest Navy Wind Octet. He has also conducted the UC Davis Chorus, UC Davis Alumni Chorus, UC Davis Early Music Ensemble, Whitman College Chorale and Chamber Singers, European-American Musical Alliance (EAMA) Festival Chorus, and the Richmond Symphony Chorus. In addition, he has recruited full orchestras, choruses, and other ensembles to perform symphonic and operatic repertoire.

Spatola-Knoll’s principal conducting mentors have included Christian Baldini, Jeffrey Thomas, Jeremy Mims, and Robert Bode. He has also studied under conductors Michael Jinbo, Mark Shapiro, David Itkin, Andrea Pestalozza, Matilda Hofman, James Ross, Marin Alsop, David Jacobs, Neil Varon, Stephen Smith, Erin Freeman, and Gerard Schwarz. Also a musicologist, violist, and collaborative pianist, Spatola-Knoll has served as an accompanist and vocal coach for the Sacramento Opera, the UC Davis Chorus, and St. Martin’s University, where he acted as music director for the opera program. He has held positions of the principal keyboardist and violist for the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra. His dissertation research on nineteenth-century compositional pairings, supervised by Dr. Christopher Reynolds, demonstrates how Romantic-era composers thought beyond the boundaries of what is conventionally considered an individual work to create aesthetically and intertextually linked pieces, and places special emphasis on the music of Weber, Schubert, and Louise Farrenc.

He obtained his Ph.D. in musicology from UC Davis in 2018. He previously studied at Whitman College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree in music (summa cum laude), and is a citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom.