Joseph C. Phillips Jr.

Composer Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., writes what he calls "mixed music," a term that applies both to music with diverse influences and to the contributions of mixed-race individuals. His works draw on a wide variety of elements, including classical music, jazz and big band, popular music, and world music traditions. Phillips was born in 1966. He attended the University of Maryland-College Park, at first planning on a career as a music teacher. After completing an undergraduate music degree, he landed a job as a teacher in an International Baccalaureate program in Bellevue, Washington. While there, he led the school's band program and earned the city's Educator of the Year award. Describing himself as a late bloomer in composition, Phillips became involved with the Seattle Young Composers Collective (now the Degenerate Art Ensemble) and earned a master's degree in composition at Stephen F. Austin University in Texas. In 2000, Phillips moved to New York to devote full time to his musical dreams. There, he formed the chamber ensemble Numinous, which he describes as part chamber orchestra, part big band, and part contemporary alternative group. The ensemble's flexible quality allows it to play music in various styles, including compositions that include multiple styles. Phillips' compositions have also been commissioned and performed by leading musicians and organizations, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival, pianist Lara Downes, and the Steve Reich Festival at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. Phillips has received major awards, among them the Brooklyn Arts Council Arts Fund award, a NewMusic USA project grant, and an American Composers Forum Jerome Foundation Grant. Phillips' works include The Eloquent Light for trumpet and guitar (2005), The Long Now for concert band (2009), and Stillness Flows Ever Changing, for soprano saxophone and orchestra (2010). He continues to work as an educator, teaching kindergarten full-time at New York's PS 321 in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. Phillips' recordings with Numinous of his own compositions have done much to spread his reputation. These include The Music of Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., released on his Numinous Records label in 2003, Vipassana (Innova Records, 2009), Changing Same (New Amsterdam Records, 2015), and The Grey Land (New Amsterdam, 2020, featuring Phillips' "monopera" by that name). That year, Phillips was at work on 1619, a new cycle of operas inspired by the New York Times' "1619 Project" and the essay "The Case for Reparations" by journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.
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