Joshua Marquez is a Philadelphia-based composer, improviser, and sound artist whose music explores the liminal space between tone/noise and digital/analog as a means to investigate the complexities and duality of his Filipino-American identity in search of connection during a diaspora. Searing a sonic imprint of cultural identity, his explorations of the noise spectrum represent alienation and assimilation through the fusion and fission of disparate timbres. Marquez is described as a “harmonious conceptualist (Rival) who “offers a musical experience rarely heard” (EARMILK) as “upsetting and calming in equal measure” with atmospheres that “sink into your skin” (Prism Reviews). Hailed as “cutting-edge” (The Gazette), “expertly crafted” (We Write About Music), “haunting” (The Daily Iowan), and “creepy” (Fanfare Magazine), Marquez’s polemic deconstruction and disintegration of sound aims to present music through a decolonized lens.
Marquez’s music has been performed and recorded, internationally, by ensembles and musicians such as the Arditti Quartet, JACK Quartet, Brno Philharmonic, Carmine Marcello Rizzi (violin), Iwona Glinka (flute), Akropolis Reed Quintet, Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, University of Iowa Center for New Music, Gate City Camerata, Quintet Sirocco, Duo Charango, Bahué Duo, and the National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia, among others.
As a performer and improviser, Marquez has performed at such venues as Arlene’s Grocery, The Public Option, Addison/Ripley Gallery, Rhizome. Never Ending Books, the Spot Tavern, RAIR, Grounded Print Shop, Nightlight, Gravity Records, the Wicked Witch, All Data Lost Festival, Elsewhere Museum, and the Englert Theatre, among others.
Joshua’s sound art has been installed at the Practice Gallery, RAIR, Gallery MC, Public Space One, Becker Gallery, Porch Gallery, among others.
His work has been awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency, a Recycled Artist In Residence (RAIR), a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency, a Brush Creek Artist Residency, a Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts Residency, a New Music USA Grant, the Arts in Wilmington Artist of 2019 Award, a 2016 Sayat Nova International Composition Competition Prize, a North Carolina Arts Grant, an Iowa Social Justice Grant, and an Iowa Arts Across Borders Grant in addition to other honors.
Marquez holds a PhD in composition from the University of Iowa in addition to an MM from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Joshua currently serves as a Resident Composer for the Saint Mary’s College Summer Composition Intensive in Notre Dame, Indiana (2013–2025), having previously taught at the University of Iowa and the Preucil School of Music.