Photo by Martha Stewart (no, not that one)
About Josh
Thanks so much for stopping by! While I’m one of those concertgoers who will read every word of every formal bio in a program, I’m afraid that method is a little too cold for what I want you to know about me in this space. However, if you need one of those formal bios for something, just keep scrolling down.
I’m a composer who currently lives in Boston, but I’ve lived all over the United States. I grew up in the Midwest but, if asked, I’ll probably tell you I’m from Minneapolis. I spent years there as a public school teacher before moving to Austin for graduate school and, after completing degrees in Composition and Musicology, moved to Washington state. In all those places, I’ve been an educator in some form or another; I proudly come from a family of teachers.
What I’ve loved about being an artist/teacher in all these places is how different each and every community is and how much I’ve learned from that diversity, and my music has begun to reflect that particular way of engaging with the world. Every piece represents my efforts to get to know the folks who show up for those concerts, attend those rehearsals, and manage those inner workings of the organization.
Having taken all those pieces of that community in, I somehow try to bake it into the piece of music I’ve been asked to write. In fact, I don't really see myself as a Composer anymore but, rather, I like to think of myself more as a Collaborator, because it more closely matches how I feel about my role as an artist combined with the vocation of serving others (especially those whose voices have been marginalized in some way); I’m just one link in the chain of composer, conductor, performers, administrators, and audience members. If you wanted to make some music with me that would be awesome.
Formal bio
Boston-based composer Joshua Shank (b. 1980) writes music that has been widely performed by educational and professional ensembles alike. His music has been called “jubilant…ethereal” (Santa Barbara News-Press) and “evocative and atmospheric” (Gramophone), while the Boston Classical Review described his Magnificat for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo as “powerful” and “emotionally charged.”
His music often features the human voice and frequently explores questions of social justice, memory, and the amplification of marginalized communities. His work capable of anything celebrated the nationwide passage of marriage equality in the United States in 2015 while his oratorio, Magnificat for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, tells the story of the Argentine mothers who organized to demand answers about their children, who were “disappeared” by the military junta during the period of state-sponsored violence known as the Dirty War. His choral song cycle Primavera en silencio draws on American conservationist Rachel Carson’s landmark 1962 work on environmental destruction, Silent Spring, and his alleluia (from quarantine) was commissioned by a consortium of 35 choirs from across the United States to raise money for gigging musicians whose livelihoods were adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shank has been commissioned by ensembles including True Concord Voices & Orchestra, Choral Arts Northwest, Lorelei Ensemble, and The Choral Project. From 2004 to 2014, he served alongside Jocelyn Hagen and Abbie Betinis as Composer-in-Residence for the Minneapolis-based professional choir The Singers—Minnesota Choral Artists. There, he collaborated with the ensemble each year on innovative programming and new works written specifically for professional-caliber choirs. His work for The Singers, He Was Singing, won the 2021 American Prize in Choral Composition.
In 2002, Shank became the youngest composer ever awarded the prestigious Raymond W. Brock Composition Award by the American Choral Directors Association. His winning work, Musica animam tangens (“Music touches the soul”), was premiered in David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center and has since been performed and recorded around the world. His music was featured in the 2009 documentary Never Stop Singing, which explores the rich choral tradition of the Upper Midwest, and his published works have sold more than 175,000 copies worldwide. He is a proud Artistic Founding Partner of Graphite Publishing’s online distribution arm, where his works are published under the banner of his publishing company, B&F Music, as well as through Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Hal Leonard, G. Schirmer, Alliance Publications, Daehn Publications, and Graphite Publishing.
In recent years, Shank has also written program and liner notes for ensembles and composers throughout the United States. In 2008, he received a grant to write an article for The Singers’ concert celebrating Minnesota’s 150th anniversary and the state’s significant contribution to the nation’s history of singing. The University of Michigan commissioned liner notes for its 2023 world-premiere recording of Jocelyn Hagen’s evening-length oratorio amass, released by Navona Records. He has also collaborated with the Austin-based professional choir Conspirare, writing extensive program notes and giving a pre-concert lecture for its 2016 tribute to the late composer Stephen Paulus, A Lyrical Life, as well as its 2012 album of Samuel Barber’s choral music, Samuel Barber: An American Romantic, released on the Harmonia Mundi label. Drawing on his graduate research into the historical passion genre, he has also provided program notes and pre-concert lectures for Craig Hella Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepard for multiple ensembles across the United States.
During the COVID-19 lockdown, Shank began producing and co-hosting the podcast Have You Heard This? with award-winning electroacoustic composer Jon Fielder. In each episode, they present works with wildly different aesthetic palettes and engage in healthy, respectful—and often humorous—dialogue about the music.
Shank received his undergraduate degree in Music Education from Luther College, where he studied conducting with Weston Noble, Timothy Peter, and Michael Culloton. He earned master’s and doctoral degrees in Musicology and Composition from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with Charles Carson, Yevgeniy Sharlat, Donald Grantham, Russell Pinkston, and the late Mexican opera composer Daniel Catán.
A longtime advocate for access to music education, Shank has served as a public school teacher in Minneapolis/St. Paul, worked with young musicians at Interlochen Arts Academy, and taught on the music faculties of Gonzaga University, Valley City State University, and Eastern Washington University.
Shank also spent several years at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, where he worked alongside researchers, corporate whistleblowers, and journalists investigating election integrity, privacy-preserving technologies, artificial intelligence, and digital civil liberties. During his time there, he co-authored original research contributing to the Center’s national efforts to improve transparency and public understanding in these areas.
In his spare time, Joshua can probably be found studying vegetarian cooking or watching hilariously bad movies with his husband, sociologist Robert Ressler, and their orange tabby, Obi (short for “Obergefell”).