Joshua Stamper has been a composer and collaborator for more than 25 years. His work reflects a deep interest in the intersection points between seemingly disparate music, and a profound love for the intimacy, charm, and potency of chamber music. Equally at home in the jazz, classical, avant-garde, and indie worlds, his work ranges from large-scale choral and instrumental works to art-pop song cycles to chamber jazz suites. Joshua has worked as an orchestral arranger for Sony/BMG and for independent labels Domino, Dead Oceans, Important Records, Smalltown Supersound, and Mason Jar Music.
Joshua's work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Composers Forum, the Anne M. and Philip H. Glatfelter III Family Foundation, the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, and the Eric Stokes Foundation. He is also the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, the Lincoln City Fellowship, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship.
Joshua's current work, “Elements,” is a four-part, transdisciplinary series exploring the physical, environmental, cultural, and philosophical significance of the four classical elements and the specific ways their movements have shaped the city of Philadelphia, its culture, and its history.
At MacDowell, he wrote 41 etudes in preparation for composing a thing that can ignite can go, a substantial new work for string quartet (The Daedalus Quartet) and percussion sextet (Mantra Percussion), to be performed in conjunction with immersive renderings of a new architecture (Billie Faircloth). a thing that can ignite can go is part three of “Elements”, and is expected to be premiered in late 2020 or early 2021.
