Joseph Scott

 

Interim Director, Orchestra and Wind Ensemble

Biography

Joseph P. Scott serves as Interim Director for the College of the Holy Cross Orchestra and Wind Ensemble.  Prior to coming to Holy Cross, Joseph was the assistant conductor of the University of Maryland’s Wind Orchestra and Wind Ensemble where he completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting.  His primary conducting teacher and mentor is Michael Votta, Jr.  Joseph served as music director and conductor of the Maryland Community Band, based in College Park, MD.  Joseph also taught at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, MD.  In addition to leading ensembles, Joseph's teaching experience includes undergraduate-level conducting classes and guest lectures in music education, orchestration, score study, and ensemble leadership.   Joseph was recently a guest conductor with the University of Maryland Repertoire Orchestra and frequently serves as an adjudicator in California and Maryland for solo and large ensemble festivals as well as honor bands.  Before his time at the University of Maryland, Joseph was the Director of Instrumental Music at Clayton Valley Charter High School in Concord, California, where he was responsible for conducting the Orchestra, Wind Ensemble, Symphonic Band, Jazz Band, and Marching Band, as well as instructing Advanced Placement Music Theory.  Under his direction, many of these ensembles participated in festivals around the country, including travel to New York City, Hawaii, and Southern California.   

Joseph earned his Bachelor of Music in Music Education from the University of Oregon where he studied with Dr. Wayne Bennett and Robert Ponto.  While at the University of Oregon, Joseph was a founding member of the university’s chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi.  After graduating, he returned to San Francisco where he received his teaching credential from San Francisco State University.  While at SFSU, Joseph was on staff at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts where he conducted the Concert Band and taught Music Theory and Survey classes.  Joseph is a member of the College Band Directors National Association as well as the National Association for Music Education and served for three years as a board member of the California Music Educators Association-Bay Section.  

In 2019, the American Prize selected Joseph as the Ernst Bacon Award Honorable Mention for his performance of Adolphus Hailstork’s American Guernica.  This award “recognizes and rewards the best performances of American music by ensemble and individual artists worldwide…”.  Joseph was selected as a semi-finalist for the 2019 American Prize in wind conducting and was also selected as a semi-finalist in 2018.  Joseph was a tier one conductor for the 2017 Frederick Fennell Memorial Conducting Masterclass at the Eastman School of Music where he worked with Mark Scatterday, Donald Hunsberger, and Craig Kirchhoff.  Other conducting teachers include David Neely, Jose Luis Novo, Andrea Brown, James Ross, Matthew Hall, and Harvey Benstein.  Joseph completed a Masters of Music in conducting from the University of Maryland in the spring of 2018.  

While in the Bay Area, Joseph kept an active schedule playing the clarinet, performing with the Contra Costa Chamber Orchestra, Chabot Wind Symphony, Golden Gate Park Band, and the San Francisco Wind Ensemble, which performed at the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles in 2015 and recorded its inaugural CD at Skywalker Ranch in 2014.