Timothy Jones

Timothy Jones is the longtime principal French horn player with the London Symphony Orchestra and has a flourishing career as a concerto soloist. He is also an important educator who holds an endowed chair at the Royal College of Music. Jones was born in London in 1961. He has played popular as well as classical music, sometimes using the name Tim Jones. He took up the horn at 15 and studied the instrument with Ifor James and Frank Lloyd, but as with some other horn players, his formal education was relatively sparse, and he left school at the age of 17 to take a position as second horn with the Munich Philharmonic. He later held positions with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, often performing concertos and major solos with these groups, before joining the London Philharmonic in 1984. Two years later, he moved to the London Symphony as principal horn, a position he has held ever since. With the London Symphony, he has performed on many of the film soundtracks in which that orchestra specializes. His recording catalog also includes original cast albums for musicals, including Oliver (1995) and Billy Elliot (2005). As a freelance horn player, Jones has appeared on such albums as Ladies and Gentlemen ... We Are Floating in Space by the rock band Spiritualized (1997). Jones has appeared as a soloist at the Salzburg Festival, the Pacific Music Festival, and the Schauspielhaus in Berlin, as well as at major British venues. A highlight of both his performing and recording careers involved composer Kenneth Fuchs' French horn concerto Canticle to the Sun, which was written for Jones, recorded with the London Symphony under the baton of JoAnn Falletta in 2006, and given its first live performance with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in 2008. The album, released on the Naxos label, earned a Grammy Award nomination. Jones has served as a guest artist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and been a member of the faculty at the Birmingham Conservatoire of Music. At the Royal College of Music, he has held the title of Professor, with the Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust endowed chair. Jones' recording credits number more than 30, and in 2021, he was heard on the London Symphony's Mozart: Wind Concertos album, featuring the orchestra's first chair players in the composer's wind and horn concertos.
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