Jonathan F. Babbitt holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Yale University and the Yale School of Music, where he was Director of the Yale Freshman Chorus and Associate Director of the Yale Glee Club under the tutelage of Fenno Heath. Active as a teacher, clinician, conductor, recitalist, adjudicator and composer, Mr. Babbitt has appeared across the United States and Canada, and toured Europe more than fifteen times as both organist and conductor, performing repertoire from the Renaissance to the contemporary. His compositions have premiered at the prestigious International Contemporary Music Festival in Bonn, Germany, and at Connecticut and Rhode Island Music Educator's Association events here in the United States. Early in his career he taught at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and was Head of the Music Department and Organist/Choirmaster at St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island.
Babbitt has more than two dozen published recordings to his credit, including Benjamin Britten's War Requiem; the Verdi Requiem; Mozart’s Grand Mass, Litanies of the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, Requiem, and assorted shorter works; Handel's Messiah; John Rutter's Magnificat, Te Deum, Gloria and Requiem; Bach's Magnificat, and three CDs of a capella part songs with the Chamber Singers of Swanhurst Chorus, which he conducted for 26 years.
A life-long church musician, Babbitt cut his musical teeth as an 8-year-old boy soprano in Litchfield, Connecticut. His first position as Organist came at the age of 14; 2015 marked his 40th anniversary as a professional liturgical musician, and he remains an active and involved member of both the American Guild of Organists and the National Association of Pastoral Musicians.
Mr. Babbitt holds concurrent appointments as Music Director of the Litchfield County Choral Union at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk, Connecticut; Director of Choral Activities, Coordinator of Applied Music Studies and Adjunct Professor of Music at Mitchell College in New London, Connecticut; and Director of Music and Organist at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Little Compton, Rhode Island. He and his wife, mezzo-soprano Allison Messier, together operate Sakonnet Music, a private teaching, recording and consulting enterprise.
