Jeffrey Noonan

Trained as a classical guitarist, Jeffrey Noonan has played early plucked instruments for over forty years across the Midwest. Based in St. Louis, he has performed regionally with various ensembles including Shakespear’s Bande, Early Music St. Louis, Bourbon Baroque (Louisville), Madison Early Music Festival (Wisconsin), Ars Antigua (Chicago), and Musik Ekklesia (Indianapolis.) In addition to performing with Musicke’s Cordes, Jeff has directed Such Sweete Melodie, a quintet specializing in seventeenth-century vocal repertoire and is a founding member of La petite brise, a trio featuring music for the Baroque flute. As accompanist and continuo player, Jeff performs a varied repertoire ranging from sixteenth-century chanson with solo voice to Handel’s Messiah with the St. Louis Symphony. A scholar of the early guitar, Jeff has produced two books and articles for Grove on the subject as well as a recent edition of eighteenth-century violin sonatas by Giovanni Bononcini. Jeff has received funding and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Newberry Library. In 2016, the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission awarded him an Artist Fellowship in recognition of his work as a performer, teacher and scholar.

Jeff holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame (A.B.), the Hartt School of Music (B.Mus.) and Washington University in St. Louis (M.Mus., Ph.D.) He taught as adjunct faculty at St. Mary’s College, Indiana/Purdue Universities in Fort Wayne, Andrews University and Washington University in St. Louis. Jeff served on the faculty of Southeast Missouri State University for sixteen years, teaching upper-level music literature and history courses and directing the classical guitar program. He retired from Southeast as a Professor of Music in 2015.

In 2019, Jeff founded Early Music Missouri, an organization dedicated to performance, education and research in Early Music and its concert series, Early Music@First. Jeff currently serves as Vice-President on the Board of Directors of the Lute Society of America. In addition to his performing and writing, Jeff maintains a small private studio, teaching lute and classical guitar and coaching Early Music performance. For more information, visit Jeff’s webpage at jjnoonan.net