Paul Jones is an Alliance Council member and organist/music director of historic Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA, where he conducts several choirs, a chamber orchestra, and oversees the extensive music program. He is also founder/artistic director of the Tenth Concert Series. He serves on the board of the Alliance of Christian Musicians and a committee of The Huguenot Fellowship. He has been an adjunct associate professor of choral music at Temple University's Boyer College of Music & Dance since 2009.
Born in New Brunswick, Canada, Jones' earliest musical training began at the age of five, in the Toronto and Western Ontario conservatory programs. He holds undergraduate degrees in music and Bible from Philadelphia Biblical University and a master's degree in piano performance from Indiana University where he was a student of the renowned pedagogue, Menahem Pressler. He was awarded the Doctor of Music degree in conducting from Indiana where he was a doctoral fellow. Major teachers include Thomas Dunn, Jan Harrington and Robert Porco (conducting); Samuel Hsu, Martin Canin, Edward Auer, and Menahem Pressler (piano); Roy Brunner and Robert Carwithen (organ); Alan Bennett (voice); and Josef Gingold (chamber music).
As a church musician, Dr. Jones has composed/arranged more than 200 sacred works including a book of hymns with James Boice entitled Hymns for a Modern Reformation. He has also written hymns with Chris Anderson, Eric Alexander, Philip Ryken, George Robertson, Derek Thomas, Tim Witmer, and Richard Wolling among others. He is president of Paul Jones Music, Inc., a corporation of composers who seek to provide new music for the twentieth-century church. He has recorded eight compact discs as pianist, organist, conductor and composer-arranger.
Dr. Jones is also a frequent musician, clinician, and speaker at music and theology conferences throughout the United States, which have included the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, Ligonier Ministries National Conferences, Great Lakes Bible Conference, the Alliance's National Pastors conferences, and Church Music Explosion at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Ft. Lauderdale. He has spoken or lectured at Covenant Theological Seminary, Knox Theological Seminary, Toronto Baptist Seminary, Faith Baptist Bible College & Seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary, Temple University; and Indiana University. He is the author of Singing and Making Music and What Is Worship Music? as well as numerous articles and chapters on hymnody and church music.
As a conductor Jones has led the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Tenth Chamber Players, and the PBU Symphony Orchestra in such venues as the Kimmel Center and the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. He regularly accompanies David Kim, concertmaster of The Philadelphia Orchestra and Anne Martindale Williams, principal cellist of The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and has recorded CDs with both of them. He has collaborated in concert performances with Metropolitan opera stars Sharon Sweet, soprano; Jerome Hines, bass; Robert MacFarland, baritone; and Stuart Neill, tenor with whom he also recorded a disc of sacred songs. He has performed much of the duo piano repertoire in concert and recorded a duo piano CD with pianist, Samuel Hsu.
