Scott Joiner

Scott Joiner’s music celebrates the convergence of his roles as composer, conductor, teacher and performer. Hailed as “A dynamo” by New Music Connoisseur, Joiner’s works include theatrical, chamber music, choral, art song, and solo piano music – embracing classical, jazz, pop and world music – reflecting the belief that different pursuits inform and connect to everything we do.

With a DMA from the Manhattan School of Music and studies in music education at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, Joiner currently serves as choral conductor, music director and composition teacher at the Chadwick School in Los Angeles. From 2020-23 he held the same position at Savannah Country Day School in Georgia, where he also served as Artistic Director of 13th Colony Sound. He is a Distance Learning Teaching Artist at MSM where he developed the program American Voices: Song and Citizenship in the United States.

After the first phase of his career as a solo vocal performer with San Francisco Opera, the American Musical Theater Ensemble, the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, New York Fringe Festival and many other organizations, Joiner began composing music for his own musical circle. His first major work, the one-act musical comedy Connection Lost , was created for film and featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, winning Best Score at Ireland’s Kerry Film Festival and was presented by the Center for Contemporary Opera, Opera Carolina, and NYC’s Modern Opera Company. Recent works include the premiere of his song cycle Dickinson, inspired by the Apple TV+ series, art songs published in Modern Music for New Singers, the Savannah Variations for string orchestra, Prelude to Invention for the New York Baroque Dance Company, and The Road Not Taken for SATB Chorus. His varied catalogue also includes five one-act music theater works.

Joiner’s pop music is available on all streaming platforms and his concert music has been performed at Austria’s Vienna Summer Music Festival, New York’s 92nd Street Y, the National Arts Club, the Laurie Beechman Theater, and numerous festivals and universities. Joiner wrote and conducted his own orchestral pops arrangements for A Night of Opera and Couture at Carnegie/Zankel Hall in 2018. In 2021 Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem hosted the retrospective, The Sounds of Scott Joiner featuring a line-up of extraordinary artists.

Active in all aspects of music theater, Joiner served as dramaturg, produced and performed the title role in world premiere of Eric Salzman’s Big Jim & the Small-Time Investors for at NY Symphony Space, described as “Truly a fine piece of post-modern creative work” (Opera News). During the pandemic of 2020, Joiner was a featured vocalist for GRATEFUL, The Songs of John Bucchino Virtual Concert along with Stephen Schwartz, Corey Cott, Mykal Kilgore, Ann Hampton Callaway, Toni Tennille and Leslie Odom, Jr.

He directed the world premiere of Michael Valenti and Stacey Luftig’s The Story of an Hour in 2019, and has served as Music Director for student productions of Newsies Jr., Beauty and the Beast, Fiddler on the Roof, Moana, R&H’s Cinderella as well as the premiere of Danny K Bernstein’s Derailed at the Play Group Theater.