About Joseph

In first grade, my class staged a “parade of nations” which led to a great curiosity about other countries. My dad’s 1970 World’s Fair guidebook* and a copy of Richard Scarry’s Busy Busy World became my bibles and I watched Miss Universe to see the national costumes and hear the languages.

Our family lived in England in the late 70s, which had a profound influence on my composing: punk and disco were battling it out in the pop charts alongside eccentrics like Kate Bush and Father Abraham. That’s quite an education in songwriting. And at the time, the Eurovision Song Contest required participants to sing in their national languages.

I always got in trouble in school for talking too much, but I was a precocious kid with a lot to say to the world! I put on shows for my family and recorded “radio plays” (usually improvised with my brother) on a portable cassette recorder, and eventually progressed to making movies on super8, then video.

In high school I taught myself BASIC on a TRS-80, so making the jump as an adult to HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and SVG was pretty easy. In college I studied dance and learned that a good deal of choreography is just an exercise in creative problem solving and one doesn’t have to be a Michael Jackson or a Mikhail Baryshnikov to express oneself physically.

Being creative and artistic doesn’t mean I am only interested in working in the entertainment industry or the arts—making videos and staging shows have taught me how to manage time and money, delegate tasks, and deal with setbacks. I like to learn and do a lot of different things and challenge myself—I’m still that precocious, curious kid!

*And over time, the contents of that guidebook also led to an interest in graphic design and architecture.