CATHERINE JOY
Composer for Film, Games and Media
credits
About catherine joy
With a passion for music and collaboration, Catherine Joy is a composer for film, media and live performance. Early in her career she won Best Documentary Score for the uplifting feature documentary Gold Balls. Catherine then scored the documentary Naughty Books (Hulu) which features narration by Aisha Tyler, Allison Tolman and Aimee Garcia, and resulted in an ASCAP Composers Choice Award nomination. Her narrative feature, Potato Dreams Of America had its world premiere at SXSW 2021. She also scored the documentary Prognosis: Notes on Living about the final journey of Oscar-winning social justice filmmaker Debra Chasnoff.
She was also awarded the New Music USA Reel Change grant for her score for documentary Women In The Front Seat (Amazon Prime), directed by Indy Saini. In 2022 she scored a number of Romantic Comedies for Reel One Entertainment including Love Gala, Luckless in Love and Romantic Rewrite and the thriller Twisted Sister for Sunshine Films. Her latest feature, the Sundance Humanities Sustainability Fellowship recipient Home Is A Hotel premiered at SFIFF winning both the Jury and Audience award, and the score has resulted in Catherine winning the SCL David Raksin Emerging Talent award. Catherine is the founder and CEO of Joy Music House, a full service score production company. She also teaches film scoring for the NYU Steinhardt Masters program.
Catherine has scored a number of series, starting with Capitol Hill which began on youtube and then was televised throughout Canada and Europe. She also scored the dramedies Abby & Tabby Alone In The Desert and No Matter What. In 2020 Catherine worked on the History channel miniseries WASHINGTON and led the Joy Music House team in score producing Homecoming Season 2 (Amazon Studios). In 2022 Catherine wrote additional music on Sony's Going Home and is currently working on the second season.
Catherine was part of the music team on notable recent projects. She was the Lead Orchestrator on the Crunchyroll original anime series High Guardian Spice and Onyx Equinox, set for release in 2020/21. She score supervised and orchestrated on Sundance award-winning feature Minari and the emmy-nominated scores RBG and Love, Gilda. She also score supervised the HBO emmy-winning documentary At The Heart of Gold and feature Son of The South executive produced by Spike Lee and directed by his long-time editor Barry Alexander Brown. Catherine is currently co-scoring the E-Line Media / BBC Studios ocean exploration video game Beyond Blue.
Catherine recently released her String Quartet EP Her Evensong. She had two chamber concert works premiere in 2019: Just Breathe with the Helix Collective and We are Machine with Kroma Quartet as part of the LA Chamber House series. She is also working on a Ballet in collaboration with choreographer Rival Tribe which will premiere in October, 2019. Her work for Didgeridoo and chamber orchestra For Those Who Have Walked Ahead premiered at Benaroya Recital Hall as part of Celebrate World Music in March 2013. Catherine’s orchestral work Artist and The Muse premiered in 2012.
Catherine graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts. She then completed her Masters of Music from Boston University and also went through the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring program in 2011.
Catherine is from Tasmania, Australia. She moved to the United States in 1998 to pursue a career in music. Catherine plays many instruments including violin, piano, and guitar.