Jonathan Kawchuk

Jonathan Kawchuk is an award-winning composer from Canada. He has scored the feature films including Hunt for the Oldest DNA (PBS, Tangled Bank), Carbon: The Unauthorized Biography (CBC, ABC), Memento Mori (National Film Board of Canada) and Clara (Serendipity Point Films), as well as the Norwegian documentary web series, Fra Ungdommen, and a video feature for Vogue Italia and Dior. He also scored Fast Horse (CBC), which won the Special Jury Award for Directing at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Kawchuk has experience writing internationally for multiple short films, theatre projects, and sound installations. As a technician, he worked on albums for Nico Muhly and Ben Frost, and as an assistant sound tech for the Philip Glass Ensemble on Music in 12 Parts, in London. He is an alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre’s Slaight Family Music Residency, the Banff Centre for the Arts Musicians in Residence program, the Berlinale Talents Lab, and is a voting member of the Recording Academy (Grammy Awards). Recently, Kawchuk performed in the world premiere of Pulitzer winning composer Raven Chacon’s Background Music.

Kawchuk is also signed to Paper Bag Records as a recording artist. For his debut album, he lived and recorded in natural environments across Europe, North America, and Asia. Kawchuk studied at multiple institutions and completed his Bachelor of Music, Honours, First Class, at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. In addition to his formal education, he has held a recording internship in Iceland, learned gamelan in Indonesia, and studied wildlife field recording in England under Chris Watson (Frozen Planet, Nova). He is represented by Evolution Music Partners. Jonathan is currently the Canadian representative for the acoustic conservation society Quiet Parks International.