Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.

To speak with JOSEPH C. PHILLIPS, JR., and to hear his music, you would imagine an optimistic philosopher, or a student of ancient religious texts. While philosophy and ancient texts are of interest and influence, in truth, this new music composer is more a scholar of feeling – a conduit of emotional imagination, manifested through a set of composed music that is at the same time new as it is familiar.

The compositions of Joseph C. Phillips Jr. and his ensemble Numinous – whose three recordings The Music of Joseph C. Phillips Jr. (Numen Records, 2003), Vipassana (Innova recordings, 2009), and Changing Same (New Amsterdam Records, 2015) – defy any classic genre definitions. Phillips calls the style, mixed music; a term inspired by mixed race people who have traits and characteristics that come from each individual parent, from the melding of the two, and their own uniqueness. Mixed music is an organic fusing of various elements from many different influences, forming compositions that are personal, different, and new.

A self-proclaimed “late bloomer” in the composing scene, Phillips is no newcomer to musical accomplishment, starting with his undergraduate music degree from the University of Maryland-College Park (later earning a master’s in composition from Stephen F. Austin University). After undergraduate studies Phillips moved to Bellevue, WA in the Pacific Northwest to teach high school music. Teaching International Baccalaureate (IB) Music and leading an award-winning band program, he earned an Educator of the Year award from the city of Bellevue, WA near Seattle. Phillips nurtured his growing interest in composing his own music and joined the Seattle Young Composers Collective (now called the Degenerate Art Ensemble) as a performer and composer. He was unable, however, to ignore the temptation to do something more with his own music and so moved to New York City to explore his own musical dreams. “I was following my passion,” Phillips says. “I didn’t want to wake up when I’m 60 and regret not at least trying to share what I had to say through composition.”

While in New York in the year 2000, inspired by many other key figures in new music, Phillips formed his own unique ensemble Numinous. A flexible ensemble that is part chamber orchestra, part big band, part contemporary alternative group, Numinous organically fuses elements of contemporary classical, jazz, world, and popular music performance practices and styles. The word numinous refers more to the feeling of awe and wonder that people can experience in many ways, not solely religious. Phillips wants his music to take listeners on a journey that is simultaneously outside of themselves, yet resonating deeply within; a journey that is both familiar and unlike any other they’ve experienced before. In creating something new, he hopes to create a sense of mystery, wonder, and beauty that refreshes and enlightens listeners.

Phillips’s compositional technique is not limited or defined by any one genre but rather it is an amalgamation transmuted into a singular and individual style. His achievements in composition have included a NewMusic USA project grant, a American Composers Forum Jerome Foundation grant for New MusicMeet the Composers Creative Connections grant, an American Music Center CAP grant, two Live Music for Dance commission grants, two Puffin Foundation grants, and a finalist for both the Sundance Institute Film Composers Lab Fellowship and the Opera Company of Philadelphia Composer-in-Residence. In addition to the worldwide performances of his works, including the Steve Reich Festival at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands, new works have been commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Next Wave Festival, the Kaufman Center and the Ecstatic Music Festival, pianist Lara Downes, the NextNOW Fest, Simone Dinnerstein and the Neighborhood Classics Concert Series for Face the Music, Dave Douglas and the Festival of New Trumpet Music, Concrete Temple Theatre, the Rhythm in the Kitchen Festival, BAM Café, the St. Olaf College Band, the St. Olaf College Jazz Band, the University of Maryland Wind Ensemble, the Lamont Jazz Orchestra at the University of Denver, Edisa Weeks and the Delirious Dance Company, Take Dance Company, Maffei Dance Company, violinist Ana Milosavljevic, and a number of other musicians and ensembles.

In addition to his many composer pursuits, Phillips teaches kindergarteners at PS 321 in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn how to sing pop songs from 1980s, how to recognize major, minor, augmented, and diminished chords, the different instrument families, music notation, and how to compose their own music.