Recipient of the President’s Award from the California Music Educators Association honoring "extraordinary accomplishments in music education," Dr. Jonathan Talberg serves as Director of Choral Activities at the Bob Cole Conservatory, where he is conductor of the international award-winning Bob Cole Conservatory Chamber Choir and the CSULB University Choir.  Recent career highlights include leading the Chamber Choir to first place at the Austrian Spittal International Choir Festival and the "Choir of the World" competition in Wales. Additionally, he and the choir have performed with groups as diverse as the Kronos Quartet, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Pacific Symphony and the Rolling Stones.

A passionate advocate for choral music education, Dr. Talberg is regularly engaged to conduct honor choirs across the US, including numerous all-state choruses, and National Association for Music Education conference choirs. His choirs from Long Beach State have performed in venues throughout Europe and Asia, including the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Great Hall of the People in China.

His professional experience includes appointments as Director of Music at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Bach Festival.  He also served as Conducting Assistant to the Cincinnati Symphony and the Aspen Music Festival and as principal choral conductor at Arrowbear Music Camp in Southern California.  A past-president of the California Choral Directors Association, he serves as an editor at Pavane Music Publishing, where a choral series dedicated to outstanding quality, collegiate-level music is published under his name. He taught high school choral music and drama for five years before moving into higher education.

Of the many hats he wears each day, the one he is most proud of is mentor to the next generation of choral musicians.  Alumni of the Bob Cole Conservatory Choral Studies program are teaching at elementary, middle and high schools, churches, community colleges and four-year universities throughout the country.  Scores of alumni are professional singers—in opera, musical theater, choirs, church music, jazz and pop.

Bob Cole Conservatory choral studies graduates are currently earning—or have finished—their doctorates at some of the finest institutions in the country, including the University of Michigan, the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, Indiana University, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Houston, the University of Southern California and UCLA.

Dr. Talberg received his BM in Choral Conducting from Chapman University, where he received the Outstanding Alumnus in the Arts award in 2014.  He earned his MM and DMA in Choral Conducting from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music and completed a post-doctoral fellowship with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Pops, and the May Festival Chorus.  His conducting teachers include Roger Wagner, William Hall, Earl Rivers, John Leman and Elmer Thomas.