Jacques Zoon is the principal flutist of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and its Music Director Riccardo Chailly. As a soloist he appears in festivals and with orchestras in Europe, Japan and the United States with highlights like his appearances with l'Orchestre national de Lyon and Emmanuel Krivine, Radiosinfonieorchester Wien (ORF), Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks with Heinz Holliger.
A keen baroque traverso flute player, Zoon recorded the CPhE Bach Konzert Wq. 169 (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 2015) and he will continue his intensive collaboration with Ensemble Berliner Barock Solisten. With Abbado and the Mozart Orchestra he recorded the Mozart Concerto KV 314 (Deutsche Grammophon 2012). Other recordings appeared on Decca, Chandos, Vanguard Classics, Koch-Schwann, Boston Records, Fidelio and NM Classics (Dutch Radio).
Zoons affinity with contemporary music found expression when he performed Madernas Hyperion with the Asko-Ensemble. In 2016 performed the flute concerto ‘Aile du Songe’ of Kaija Saariaho with Norrköpings Symfoniorkester and Han-Na Chang.
Jacques Zoon did technical research of the flap system of the transverse flute. In 2005, he founded Zoon&Maia Flutes, a company making wooden flutes. He created a French flute with head joints he manufactures himself (based on the Boehm System, named "the Zoon model"). For the baroque music he designed and created a traverso with a Boehm System. With Zoon&Maia Flutes in Portugal he produces a flute with a better key design for the C-sharp.
Zoon studied flute at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam with Koos Verheul and Harrie Starreveld, graduating with honors. He continued his studies at the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada, where he took master classes with Geoffrey Gilbert and András Adorján. As a teenager and during his studies, Zoon played in the Dutch National Youth Orchestra and the European Union Youth Orchestra, among others under direction of Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein.
In his position as principal flutist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (1988-1994 under Riccardo Chailly) Zoon was praised for his solo appearances in flute concertos by Mozart, André Jolivet, Frank Martin and Sofia Gubaidulina. In the same period he performed as principal flutist and as soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and its conductors Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink and Nicolaus Harnoncourt. In 1997 he was appointed principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa. In 2004 Zoon moved back to Europe, to join Claudio Abbado and become principal flutist at both the Mozart Orchestra in Bologna as well as the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.
Jacques Zoon has been professor of flute at the Rotterdam Conservatory (1988–1992), Indiana University (1994–1997), and the New England Conservatory and Boston University (1997–2001). Since 2002 he teaches at the Geneva Conservatory and since 2008 at Madrid's Queen Sofía College of Music and Instituto Internacional de Música de Cámara.
In 1987 Jacques Zoon won the jury prize at the Jean-Pierre Rampal flute competition in Paris. The Boston Globe elected him as "musician of the year 1998". In 1999 Zoon and his long term (since 1978) accompanist Bernd Brackman received an Edison Award for their recording of modern classical music for flute and piano.
