Joel Pickard

Biography

Composer of music and sound for film and episodic series. His work includes scoring three seasons of Art in the Twenty-First Century (PBS), as well as the title sequence and episodic music for The Weekly and The New York Times Presents. His music has premiered at Sundance, the San Francisco International Film Festival, and RiverRun, among others. He has created music for projects with The New York Times and the Smithsonian Institution, and developed sonic identities for Sundance, BritBox, and HBO. As a multi-instrumentalist with formal training in classical guitar and cello, he favors recording with real instruments, focusing on natural performance, texture, and nuance. As a curious sonic explorer, he also creates sound with analog synthesizers and modern digital production techniques. He holds an M.A. in Composition from Mills College, where he studied with Fred Frith, Alvin Curran, and Pauline Oliveros, and served as a teaching assistant to Pauline Oliveros (Deep Listening). He earned a B.A. in Music from Bethel University. Based in Portland, Oregon