Jonathan Segel

Segel was born in Marseilles in 1963, France and grow up in Davis, California and Tucson, Arizona. Jonathan went to college at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he studied under Peter Elsea and experimental music pioneer Gordon Mumma. In Santa Cruz he hooked up with Camper Van Beethoven, apparently for life. He moved to San Francisco in 1989, where he worked with many bands including his own Hieronymus Firebrain and Jack & Jill, moved to Los Angeles in 1997 to work for Dane Davis at Danetracks, a film sound post production facility, then back to Oakland, California in 2001, where received a master's degree in music composition at Mills College, studying with Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran and Joelle Leandre. He is the son of Irwin H. Segel, a Professor of Biochemistry at University of California, Davis and author of Biochemical Calculations. Jonathan Segel has taught music theory and electronic music at the College of Marin and Ohlone College in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today he performs improvising acoustic/digital solo (or with others as Chaos Butterfly), in a revived Camper Van Beethoven and as a rock and roll band leader in his eponymous band. Segel has been an occasional contributor to music from the Big City Orchestra over the past few decades. Segel currently resides in Stockholm, Sweden.