Eric Jones

Hello to everyone! I am excited to be starting here at Creekview this year, and here is a little bit about me: I am married to my wife Claudia, a beautiful Bolivian violinist who I met when we were both in the Symphony Orchestra at the University of North Texas. We have two children: Juliana is 4 and Diego is 2 years and 8 months old. I was born in Nebraska, lived in Kansas for two years, and then lived in Oklahoma where I graduated from Norman High School. I came to the University of North Texas where I majored in Viola Performance. I got my bachelor’s and masters degrees in Viola performance from UNT, as well as a masters in ethnomusicology. I played in the UNT Symphony and Chamber Orchestras as well as Collegium Musicum, UNTs Baroque Orchestra. While studying at UNT, I was awarded a Fulbright grant to do fieldwork research in Bolivia for a year, where I studied the relationship between changing folk music styles in Bolivian urban areas in relation to rural-urban migration patterns. I recently completed coursework for my PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I speak Spanish and Quechua (the main indigenous language of the Andean region) which I studied while at the University of Illinois and in Bolivia. I am an active performer, and enjoy playing chamber and orchestral music. I have played in the East Texas, Irving, and Richardson Symphony Orchestras, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Bolivia, the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, and Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana. I enjoy the outdoors and love to hike, bike, and go camping. Some of my favorite places are Big Bend National Park, anywhere in Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona - basically anywhere there are mountains or deserts! I enjoy reading and listening to all different styles of music, and one of my hobbies is arranging world music and jazz songs for small string ensembles. I love spending time with my family and playing with Juliana and Diego. This is my first year teaching orchestra, but I taught private violin and viola here at Creekview and in CFBISD for many years while I was at UNT. I am very excited and honored to be working with Ms. Blackstock and all of the wonderful CHS Orchestra students this year!