Composer - Performer - Teacher
About
© Mariana Da Silva Gabriel, 2020
As a composer, Joseph is inspired by a wide range of musical styles, such as Romanticism, Minimalism, Modernism and Neo-classical, as well as symphonic film music, musical theatre, jazz, and folk. He is receptive to the influence of human culture and his surroundings on his music, with key themes including the environment, different ancient mythologies, and human experiences in the 21st-Century. The illustration opposite was drawn by Mariana Gabriel, for the cover of Joseph's final undergraduate portfolio.
Joseph continued to develop his compositional voice at the University of Cambridge, writing a piano trio, Chaos Theory, for the critically-acclaimed Amatis Trio, a piece for wind quintet, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, workshopped by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and two pieces for orchestra, Ragnarök and The Blue Marble.
As a performer, Joseph has performed extensively as a clarinettist and pianist across South-West and mid-Wales. He has also undertaken a number of roles in musical theatre productions, including Enjolras in Les Miserables, Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and Roger in Rent. He performed as a member of the Cardiff Symphonic Wind Band, on clarinet and bass clarinet, and the Symphony Chorus and Chamber Choir, both as a tenor. During his undergraduate degree he toured China with the Cardiff University Chamber Choir, performing in Xiamen, Xi'an, Guangzhou, and Beijing. From 2019-2020, he was the recipient of the tenor vocal scholarship at St. Martin’s Church in Roath, Cardiff.
Joseph graduated from Cardiff University in 2020 with a first class Bachelor of Music degree with Honours, where he specialised in composition, film music, and piano performance. His thesis, titled Expansion and Cohesion: Music and the Contemporary Film Franchise, investigated the role music performs in expanding and maintaining cohesion in film franchises, with Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and the Marvel Cinematic Universe serving as case studies. His piano recital featured preludes 1 and 14 from Shostakovich's 24 preludes, and the second movement of Mervyn Roberts' Piano Sonata. His composition portfolio consisted of four pieces; Threads, for Wind Quintet, Absolute, for String Trio, Styx, for Two Pianos, and Dogfight, for Symphony Orchestra.
In 2022, Joseph was one of the featured composers on the Peter Reynolds Composers Studio at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival, in Cardiff, Wales. Joseph wrote two pieces for the course, Magnetic Resonance for String Quartet, which was workshopped by the Carducci Quartet, and Tsunami for Percussion Quartet, which was workshopped by Sandbox Percussion.
Joseph is currently working on a piece for Symphonic Wind Band, inspired by his childhood and formative years in Wales, and he is also setting a poem by Rudyard Kipling to music for SATB choir.
