ABOUT
Joseph is a highly sought after composer, musical director, arranger, orchestrator and pianist working across theatre, cabaret and concert.
Compositions for stage include Scene Unseen (Royal and Derngate / English Touring Opera) and Songs for Our Times (Lichfield Festival Commission) both with singer/writer Jessica Walker, with whom he collaborates regularly, the acclaimed community musical Carnation for a Song (for which he also wrote lyrics), She Ventures and He Wins and Sing Before You Speak Again (all Young Vic) and Cabaret Macabre (British Youth Music Theatre). His TV composition credits include Mud, Sweat and Tractors and Shooting the War (BBC4). He has also composed music for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, the BBC Elstree Concert Band, guitarist Antonis Hatzinikolaou as well as contributing original songs to music collective, Song in the City’s Voices of London project.
As musical director and arranger, Joseph’s credits include Cush Jumbo’s solo show, the Olivier-nominated Josephine and I (Bush Theatre, London / Public Theater, New York), Boundless as the Sea and Miss Littlewood (Royal Shakespeare Company / Cunard) Not Such Quiet Girls (Opera North / Leeds Playhouse) for which he also composed some original music, All I Want is One Night (Manchester Royal Exchange, Wilton’s Music Hall and Brits Off-Broadway, New York), Solitude: the Songs of Barbara (La Barcarolle, Saint-Omer), Dead Funny Women (Lichfield Festival Commission), A Berlin Kabaret (Brighton Festival) plus arrangements for Barunka O’Shaugnessy’s adaptations of The Miser and She Stoops to Conquer (BBC Radio 3). He was also music associate for Tim Carroll’s production of Othello (RSC). His three appearances at New York’s prestigious Brits Off-Broadway festival have all received Critics’ Choice in the New York Times.
Concert and cabaret appearances include Chasing Rainbows with internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano, Lea Desandre and Ensemble Jupiter (Opera Comique, Paris / Cité Bleue, Geneva / Opera Rouen), for which he also made the orchestrations, and three shows as musical director and orchestrator with Fascinating Aida’s Liza Pulman, The Heart of it (recorded as an album of the same name), Liza Pulman Sings Streisand and The Songs of Hollywood. These shows have toured extensively at venues including the West End’s Lyric Theatre, Cadogan Hall, Wilton’s Music Hall, the National Concert Hall, Dublin, Jersey Opera House, and (in a special collaboration with the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band), the Liverpool Philharmonic. His numerous festival appearances include Lichfield (where he was an artist-in-residence 2018 and 2021), Deal, Ludlow, Presteigne, Ledbury and O Festival, Rotterdam, plus Derek Jarman: Modern Nature at the Barbican and Bold Tendencies in Peckham.
Joseph studied at Oxford University and the Royal Academy of Music (where he was awarded an ARAM, an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2021). He is a member of the Higher Education Faculty at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, has worked as composer and musical director in several of the UK’s leading drama schools, and has composed pieces for the ABRSM’s clarinet and ensemble singing syllabuses.
“Joseph Atkins, a superb and sensitive pianist”
Charles Isherwood, New York Times