One of the most frequently performed contemporary American composers, Jonathan Leshnoff has received commissions from major orchestras in the U.S. and abroad. He is also an important educator.

Leshnoff was born on September 8, 1973, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. His father was an engineer, and his mother was an artist. He was raised in Conservative Judaism but later adopted the Orthodox Jewish faith. Quite creative as a child, Leshnoff first had his attention drawn to classical music at age three, when he heard his father play an LP record of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67. Leshnoff simultaneously attended Johns Hopkins University and the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland, as an undergraduate, earning bachelor's degrees in anthropology and music. He pursued master's studies at Peabody and earned a doctorate at the University of Maryland. One of his earliest compositions was ...without a chance, for three percussionists, from 2002. That work was recorded on the album Jonathan Leshnoff: Chamber Music, which appeared in 2012 on the Naxos label. In the early 2000s decade, Leshnoff joined the faculty of Maryland's Towson University, where he remained as of the early 2020s.

Many of Leshnoff's compositions are for orchestra, although he has also composed chamber music, choral music (including four oratorios), and music for band, the latter for the United States Marine Band and for the bands of Maryland institutions, among other groups. His orchestral works have been played by such major U.S. ensembles as the Atlanta Symphony, Dallas Symphony, and Pittsburgh Symphony. He has written four numbered symphonies. Works with solo parts have been premiered by such artists as pianist Joyce Yang, cellist Johannes Moser, and violinist Gil Shaham. Leshnoff has gained attention from the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Santa Barbara Symphony, which jointly commissioned his Clarinet Concerto; the Atlanta Symphony and Carnegie Hall, which commissioned his Zohar Oratorio; and the Dallas Symphony and Harrisburg Symphony, which commissioned his Violin Concerto No. 2. By 2022, when Leshnoff's Horn Trio appeared on a Naxos album along with horn trios by Brahms and Lennox Berkeley, some 25 of Leshnoff's compositions had been recorded. ~ James Manheim, Rovi