Joel Thompson is a composer, conductor, pianist and educator whose works aim to prioritize community and facilitate connection, while creating music that is “alive and inquisitive, in constant dialogue” (Arts ATL) and “one of the most attractive things one has heard” (New York Classical Review). His work is both powerful and incisive in centering the concerns and desires of the voiceless and historically marginalized. Thompson currently serves as Houston Grand Opera’s first-ever full-time Composer-in-Residence, holding a five-year residency that commenced in 2022.

Thompson’s career honors include the 2023 Sphinx Medal of Excellence; a 2018 American Prize for his well-known choral work, Seven Last Words of the Unarmed; and the 2017 Hermitage Prize – an honor bestowed by the Hermitage Artist Retreat. Thompson draws inspiration from artists who transcend labels and have a clear sense of identity, such as Nina Simone, Esperanza Spalding and Cécile McLorin Salvant. 

Thompson has been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, Bravo! Vail Music Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Atlanta Master Chorale, San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, Kansas City Symphony, American Composers Forum and Sphinx Organization’s EXIGENCE Vocal Ensemble (of which he is a founding member), amongst others.

June 2025 marked the world premiere of Thompson’s A Voice Within, a song cycle for soprano, baritone and piano, featuring soprano Nicole Heaston, baritone Justin Austin and pianist Donald Lee III, as part of his residency with Houston Grand Opera. Additionally, in July, Thompson’s String Quartet received its world premiere at the Ravinia Steans Institute. January 2026 marks the world premiere of Thompson’s orchestration of African Queens, performed by Karen Slack with the Naples Philharmonic, with subsequent performances to be announced. In March 2026, the New York Philharmonic will premiere a new orchestral arrangement of Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, featuring variations orchestrated by composers including Thompson. 

Recent commissions include an expanded orchestration of The Snowy Day, a work originally composed by Thompson in 2020 based on Ezra Jack Keats’ children’s book of the same name. A Caldecott Medal winner, the book is celebrated as one of the first mainstream children’s books to prominently feature a Black protagonist.  Thompson was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera to bring the story to the opera stage, working with children’s author Andrea Davis Pinkney to capture the book’s sense of enchantment in an operatic format that is now staged nationally. An expanded version of the work was commissioned by The Minnesota Opera and performed by the company in February 2025.

Thompson’s recent commissions also include the January 2025 world premiere of Thompson’s On Mars for mezzo-soprano, viola and piano which took place at Atlanta’s Spivey Hall with mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, violist Matthew Lipman and pianist Tamar Sanakidze. Performances of the work continued on a world premiere tour featuring dates at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Celebrity Series of Boston and the Kennedy Center. 

Additionally, Thompson’s work, Dove Songs, written for and performed by soprano Renée Richardson, premiered at Houston Grand Opera in March 2024. During the same month, Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic performed the world premiere of To See the Sky, co-commissioned from Thompson by the American Composers Forum, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival and Bravo! Vail Music Festival. Thompson’s work Fire and Blue Sky, an LA Opera commission featuring a libretto by Imani Tolliver, was premiered by LA Opera in June 2024 under the baton of Resident Conductor Lina González-Granados.

Well known for the choral work Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, which premiered at the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club under the direction of Eugene Rogers in November 2015, Thompson has received several accolades for the piece including the 2018 American Prize for Choral Composition and the Craft Specialty-Musical Composition/Arrangement EMMY® at The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Michigan Chapter) 39th EMMY® Award Ceremony. Seven Last Words of the Unarmed contains seven movements, each setting to music the last words of an unarmed Black man before he was killed.

Other notable works include My Dungeon Shook (2020), which was inspired by the words of the celebrated author and civil rights activist James Baldwin. A second work amplifying Baldwin’s words, To Awaken the Sleeper for orchestra and orator, premiered at the Colorado Music Festival in 2021. Nine American orchestras signed on as co-commissioners for To Awaken the Sleeper, and a host of other orchestras have performed it since its premiere. In 2024, Thompson’s The Places We Leave (2021) was performed by mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the Kansas City Symphony with conductor Michael Stern. Thompson's works are published by Just a Theory Press.

Thompson holds a B.A. in Music and M.M. in Choral Conducting, both from Emory University, and is currently studying with Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Theofanidis, Han Lash, Martin Bresnick and David Lang at the Yale School of Music for his D.M.A. in Composition. Thompson served as Director of Choral Studies and Assistant Professor of Music at Andrew College from 2013 to 2015 and taught at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School from 2015 to 2017. He was a post-graduate fellow at Arizona State University’s Ensemble Lab/Projecting All Voices Initiative and a composition fellow at the 2017 Aspen Music Festival and School, where he studied with composers Stephen Hartke and Christopher Theofanidis. Prominent teachers include Eric Nelson, William Ransom, Laura Gordy, John Anthony Lennon, Kevin Puts and Scott Stewart. Thompson is an alumnus of the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works commissioning program, established to foster leading talents in the field. 

Thompson was born in the Bahamas to Jamaican parents before the family moved to Atlanta. Thompson is currently based in Houston for his composer-in-residence post with Houston Grand Opera.