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Joel Rust (b. 1989, London) has received commissions from the Melos Sinfonia, the Park Lane Group, the Choir of Gonville & Caius College Cambridge, Filthy Lucre, Discantus, and Mr McFall’s Chamber. His music has been performed throughout the UK, in the USA, France, Holland, Germany, Israel, Colombia, and Russia, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Radio France Musique, and Radio 4 (Netherlands). In March 2014, Discantus released his work for six female voices, sunt etenim pennae volucres mihi, on their CD ‘Music for a King’. an awakening voice, for chamber ensemble, received an Honorable Mention in the ASCAP Foundation 2016 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. Future projects include a new work for The Hermes Experiment, and a chamber opera in collaboration with David Troupes.
Joel is currently studying for a Doctorate at New York University. In 2013 he gained a Master’s with Distinction at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he studied with Julian Anderson, supported by the RVW Trust and the Leverhulme Trust. He graduated from the Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway, in 2011, with a double-starred First, before spending a year at Harvard on a Herchel Smith Scholarship.
Joel writes:
Beyond the Heart is my first work for orchestra, and it draws on the expressive gestures of the Romantic and post-Romantic orchestral works I grew up listening to, seeking to wear its heart on its sleeve. It also moves in the opposite direction, separating the orchestra into small groups or individuals who act almost independently of each other, sometimes with the same goals, at other times opposed. The conflict between the sweeping gestures and these more atomized processes is the central thread of the piece; its title reflects this tension.