This is the third year that the Tomorrow’s Newsmaker Award have been made to recognize tomorrow’s leaders in five categories, arts and entertainment, business, public service, sports and student journalism. Past winners in the arts and entertainment category include Russian born pianist Natasha Paremski and Alondra de la Parra the conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. Jonathan Russell is certainly not your typical 13-year-old. Mr. Russell, a Suzuki trained violinist, has toured in Hungary with the Bohm Ragtime Jazz Band as well as throughout the United States and in the spring of 2008 received a special award from the U.S. Embassy for his role as a cultural ambassador. While many young people his age are interested in attending rock concerts and perhaps dreaming of some day performing on a stage, Jonathan was recently engaged to perform three nights at Rose Hall with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on November 6th, 7th and 8th.
Jonathan’s love affair with the violin began at only 18 months old when he was shown a picture of a violin. By the time he was seven he was playing in New York City nightclubs, usually with traditional or Dixieland ensembles. When he was nine he was a featured performer leading his own band at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. In 2005 he won the Best Improvisation award for string players under 13 in the American String Teachers Associations Alternative Styles competition. He became the youngest jazz musician ever invited to play in a master class at Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2006. Jonathan is an eighth grade student at the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan and studies violin at the School for String also in Manhattan with additional studies with American Jazz Master Dr. Barry Harris, Grammy Award winning violinist Andy Stein and Ron Drotos. Other nominees in the arts and entertainment for 2008 included Ingrid Michaelson, a rising singer-songwriter whose songs have been heard on Grey’s Anatomy and the recent film The House Bunny, Amy Neswald an award winning playwright, Christopher Georgetti a voice and opera student with an ever increasing array of credits and Jay Greenburg, a young classical composer with contracts to both IMG Artists and Sony Classical.
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