Joseph Marcello

Joseph Marcello is an American composer and author, and the director of Music for Life Studios in Northfield, Massachusetts.  His most recent commission was Romanza, a violin concerto composed for the Vermont Philharmonic, premiering to great acclaim in 2019, and he is the recipient of the Delius Award for Composers for his Dances of the Night, as well as a 2010 New England Newspaper & Press Association Award for his music and arts journalism for the Hampshire Gazette, the Greenfield Recorder and for The American Composers Forum.  He holds a master’s degree in composition, acquired under the mentorship of Pulitzer-Prize winning composers, William Bolcom, George Perle and Hugo Weisgall at the Aaron Copland School of Music in New York, Henry Weinberg at the Conservatory of Music in Bologna, Italy, and Robert Stern at the University of Massachusetts.

A classical guitarist, he retains a deep faith in the power of tonality while consistently exploring new harmonic regions. His 2004 CD, Perchance to Dream, was created as a cycle of lullabies for the dying. In 2006, Marcello's Three Spirituals was given its world premiere by Boston chorus Coro Allegro under the direction of Maestro David Hodgkins 2006 to great acclaim. More recently the Conway Chorus in Conway, Massachusetts has premiered his Three Canticles to Life (2011) Pater Noster (2012) and Stabat Mater (2013), each for chorus and chamber orchestra.

His most recent CD, Glory, (2017) with Metropolitan Opera tenor Irwin Reese and Hartford pianist Paul Bisaccia, is an anthology of original spirituals extolled by Dr. Horace Boyer, author of How Sweet the Sound, The Golden Age of Gospel, in the unexpected exclamation, after first hearing them “. . .people bring me their Gospel music all the time—and it has the right rhythms, and it has the right harmonies. . .but it doesn’t have the ‘chitlin,’ the ‘grits’ and the ‘gravy’. . .How did you ever do that?”

He was recently commissioned by the Vermont Philharmonic to compose a Concerto for Violin & Orchestra, which premiered in 2 different cities in April of 2019 to enthusiastic response.

Composer-in-residence for many years for the Sunapee Arts Theater, he has written over a dozen operas and stage musicals, including those based upon Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, as well as many solo, ensemble and vocal works.

His song, Today’s the Only Day of My Life, was featured on the soundtrack of the film, Choices, and his striking lament, Great Wars to Come, for contralto and two classical guitars, emerged out of his own arduous and ultimately successful efforts to  become a conscientious objector in the midst of the Vietnam War.

Film music and its restoration have been an abiding part of Marcello’s musical journey, and he owns a rare collection of classic film scores in both short score and full orchestral manuscript, gathered (both legally and otherwise) through his friendships with composers such as Alex North, Philip Sainton and Hans J. Salter, including Moby Dick, How Green Was My Valley, Night of the Hunter and Spartacus.  In 1992 he composed the original score for the documentary film, The Biltmore.  He has been commissioned to restore – solely by ear - soundtracks whose manuscript scores have been lost, such as the 1935 Universal horror film, The The White Hell of Pitz Palu, The Werewolf of London and others, and he has written extensive essays on the genre the MagicImage Filmbooks, The Wolf Man (Universal Pictures, 1941, in which he exhaustively analyzes the technique of scoring the horror film. Over the past 10 years, he has also written a weekly feature for his column, Encores & Curtain Calls, on classical music and theater in Western New England for the Greenfield Recorder.

His deep interest in healing and well-being has resulted in some 14 books on the subject, as well as the path of spiritual awakening.

Marcello resides in an oak post-and-beam cape on a pine-clad hilltop in Northwestern New England with his partner, and an assortment of 25 cockatiels and parakeets which he has raised from the nest, and which can often be found, perched on his shoulders, lap or feet while he composes. He harbors abiding passions for long-distance lake-swimming, tree-hugging, and the art of Debussy, Ravel and Vaughan Williams.

Comments upon the music of Joseph Marcello:

1. (Personal letter from Swedish 13-string guitar virtuoso BIS recording artist & Professor at the Hochschule Musik und Theater in Zurich, Switzerland; site: http://www.miolin.com/)

2. (Living music legend 80 year old jazz pianist Emory Austin Smith has said of Marcello’s art:

And from  cellist, Josephine Dorcester, Brattleboro Music Center): 

“Joseph Marcello is the only contemporary composer whose music I really find beautiful. . .the only one.  When other composers write, it seems their harmonies go nowhere and do nothing to one’s heart.  But Joseph’s music leads you to places never-before heard which somehow, once you are there, seem inevitable, right and exquisite.”