Joel Roston is a composer, guitar player, and teacher living in Boston, MA.

Among numerous commercials, independent videos, web-originals, and films, Joel composed, performed and recorded the score for the independent television comedy “Sharing,” which, in 2015, was picked up for pilot-production by NBC. He scored the 2017 PBS American Experience short The Turner Diaries: A Call to Action, co-composed music for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial with award-winning composer John Kusiak, and contributed orchestrations/arrangements and prepared scores for the films Uncle Nick and PBS’s The Battle of Chosin. Joel arranged, orchestrated, and produced the backing track to Comusica, the centerpiece of MIT’s 2020 online commencement ceremony.

As a producer and sound designer, he has engineered, recorded, edited audio, and created custom sound-design elements for Facebook, MIT, TradeStation, Gordon College, Cengage, Huntington, and many others.

Joel has written music for a number of ensembles including RAHA Duo, Boston Nonet, Brooklyn Brass, Till By Turning, Evan Ziporyn’s Critical Band, Dedham Country Day School, and Duo Orfeo, as well as several compositions for solo classical and electric guitar.

In 2016-2017, Joel released a two-EP set of embellished, electronic arrangements of Civil War songs, Domain Vol. 1 and Domain Vol. 2, followed by 2018’s Day Owl, an album of personal napping music, which was released digitally by Joyful Noise Recordings. In 2019, Joel released Zynthetic Zketches Vol. 1, an EP of analogue-synthesizer sketches/explorations, followed by 2020’s Zynthetic Zketches Vol. 2

Joel has played in, composed for, and toured with his own bands, Big Bear and Beautiful Weekend, as well as other projects including Tyondai Braxton‘s Wordless Music Group (in collaboration with the LA Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the The London Sinfonietta), Man Forever, Evan Ziporyn’s Critical Band, MIT’s Balinese Gamelan ensemble, Gamelan Galak Tika, Glenn Branca’s 100-guitar ensemble for Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City), and Kevin Micka’s Animal Hospital Ensemble.

Joel is a partner and composer at Titlecard Music and Sound, a music composition and sound-making company based in Boston, MA.

Joel studied classical guitar performance at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School during which time he also completed Anthony Braxton’s “Musical Systems” class at Wesleyan University.

In addition to composing, performing, and private/group instruction, Joel gives guest lectures about music communication to university film/production classes (Emerson College, University of Connecticut, Fitchburg State University, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and others) and, for five semesters, served as a Visiting Faculty Member teaching film-scoring and media composition at Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, MA (Spring 2023 - Spring 2025).