About
Joanne S. Na is a composer who shapes sound through the exploration of textures and colours, crafting musical narratives that evoke emotions and invite reflection. She often draws inspiration from nature, literature, artworks, and places.
She is the recipient of the Ann Southam Prize of the Canadian Music Centre and the winner of several competitions, including the WASBE International Composition Contest, NAfME Student Composers Competition, and the Pioneering Voices Choral Series Composition Competition (Mount Holyoke College), the Seoul Grand Philharmonic Orchestra Composers Award, and Hwaum Project Academy’s Call for Scores (Seoul, KR).
Her music has been featured at the Banff Centre Chamber Music, Du Vert à l'Infini Festival, LunART Festival, Northwestern University New Music Conference, Vancouver Sonic Boom Festival, University of Michigan Organ Conference, Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium, Vancouver Chamber Choir concert, as well as on Arcade, an album by clarinetist Wonkak Kim, released by MSR Classics.
She has worked with prominent artists and ensembles, including Grammy-winning soprano Estelí Gomez, soprano Arwen Myers, cellist Arlen Hlusko, Wonkak Kim and Eunhye Grace Choi Duo, 4X5 Piano Duo, Delgani String Quartet, Kenari Quartet, Standing Wave, Turning Point Ensemble, LunART Festival Ensemble, Noyo Consort, Saxophilia Saxophone Quartet, UBC Contemporary Players Ensemble, Helix! New Music Ensemble, Hwaum Chamber Orchestra, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Rutgers Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Grand Philharmonic Orchestra, University of Oregon Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Chamber Choir, Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra, Victoria Symphony, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
Upcoming projects include residency at the Banff Centre Chamber Music program, a new work for Turning Point Ensemble's Defining Voices program, and a commission from Standing Wave.
Joanne is also an educator in composition, music theory, music history, and piano. She now serves as a coach for the Contemporary Players Ensemble at the University of British Columbia, working with director Paolo Bortolussi. In the 2022-23 academic year, she was a lecturer in music history at SangMyung University in Seoul, South Korea. She also taught composition and notation courses at the University of Oregon from 2019 to 2021, while teaching composition and piano privately.
Currently, she is a DMA candidate at the University of British Columbia, with the support of a Four-Year Doctoral Fellowship, studying with Dorothy Chang. She holds degrees from Rutgers University and the University of Oregon, where she received the Outstanding Graduate Scholar Award. Her former teachers include Keith Hamel, Robert Kyr, David Crumb, and Scott Ordway.
In her free time, she loves exploring nature, enjoying coffee and wine, reading, going to museums, playing janggu, doing yoga, and listening to bossa nova.
