Jon Snell is a composer-pianist based in New York City, where he has been active for over a decade, working across jazz, theatre, film, and live performance.
Snell has served as Co-Producer and Arranger/Orchestrator since 2019 for multiple Manhattan School of Music large-scale productions, most notably their 2023 “Season’s Greetings”—featuring 175 performers across 12 ensembles, including members of the New York Philharmonic.
He has been commissioned by the Cedar Rapids Municipal Band (original composition for concert band and harmonica soloist, 2024) and by Teachers College, Columbia University (arrangement of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy for their 2021 Convocation, performed by a hybrid virtual/live orchestra of over 50 musicians). He is a recipient of the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award.
His work is also featured in the Japanese short film Wandering Memories (2023), which won the Gold Remi Award at WorldFest-Houston and Best Foreign Short at the Arizona International Film Festival.
As a performer, Snell has appeared with the Off-Broadway hit Titanique (Daryl Roth Theatre) from May 2024 through June 2025 as substitute musician across 125 performances, including 30 as conductor/keyboardist. He has toured with Victor Treviño Jr., the 2022 Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist World Champion, on piano and keyboards, and has served as music director, pianist, composer, and arranger at Trinity Baptist Church NYC for over 380 services since 2017. He has also given solo performances for organizations including Architectural Digest, The Peninsula New York, and the International Justice Mission.
In the studio, Snell’s credits include piano and B3 organ on Broadway artist Kennedy Caughell’s “Until All Are Free” (written by Jenn Petersen); piano on jazz artist Ethan Helm’s Wet Electricity, Vol. 1; and orchestral arranging and conducting for a 30-piece studio orchestra at Avatar Studios.
Snell graduated magna cum laude from the University of Northern Iowa, where he received the Purple and Old Gold Award for Conspicuous Achievement in Music, studying both jazz and classical piano. He later earned a master’s in Jazz Piano on scholarship from the Manhattan School of Music, where he received the William H. Borden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Jazz and was invited to join the Precollege Division Jazz Piano Faculty in 2018, serving for seven years.
Jon Snell 