Joseph Celli is an American based inter-media artist who is boldly experimental, and uses sound as a central aspect of his work. Acclaimed internationally for several decades as a double reed performer/composer, record, radio, concert producer and arts administrator.
Joseph has conducted extensive work in the field of experimental and world music as both a composer/performer and presenter and has worked with a virtual “who’s who” of the American experimental music community including John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Ornette Coleman, Morton Feldman, Robert Ashley, Anthony Braxton, Malcolm Goldstein, Laurie Anderson, Phill Niblock, Jerry Hunt, Terry Riley, Alvin Lucier, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Kronos Quartet, Alvin Curran, Tan Dun and Jin Hi Kim amongst many others. His experimental compositions and improvisations reflect the oft-quoted Cage statement, “…an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen.” He toured to over forty countries, presented innumerable work premiers of works written for him as well as the American Premiere of Karhlenize Stockhausen’s Solo and Spiral for a soloist with a shortwave receiver.
“My early work in the 70s with the de-constructed oboe and the extended techniques that I developed resulted in composers writing for these instruments in profoundly new ways and subsequent generations of performers expanding the sonic field of double reed instruments.” Joseph’s expanded instrumental vocabulary led to his studies of Korean, Japanese and Indian double reed instruments and some cases this resulted in introducing them into Western performance or composition including new works by Ornette Coleman, Jin Hi Kim, and others.