Joel Goodman

Joel Goodman creates emotion through music. As a multi-talented composer for feature films, documentaries, television, album releases, performance ensembles and other forms of collaborative media, his signature style thrives in musical settings that express the full range of human emotion.

An Emmy-winner and four-time Emmy nominee known for a deeply nuanced sound filled with intricate subtleties, Goodman’s diverse body of work includes scores for 5 Oscar-nominated and over 40 Emmy-winning documentaries. Early in his career, he composed advertising music for some of the biggest brands in the world, produced records for the acclaimed audiophile label Chesky Records, and wrote commissioned works for ensembles that have been performed everywhere from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to the Oak Tree Concert Series in Los Angeles.

A native New Yorker, Goodman learned to play his first instrument (the trumpet) from the legendary public school music educator Allen Stier. He attended high school in Manhattan at the famed High School of Music & Art, studying jazz with Justin DiCioccio and orchestral performance with Sydney Baker while taking private bass lessons from Rich Samalin and Ken Smith. It was here that he started to hone his diverse musical sensibility, with notable classmates such as Charley Drayton, Bernard Wright, Sterling Campbell, Tony Mangurian, Larry Aberman, Erik Sanko, Eric Rosenberg, Roey Shamir and Marcus Rojas.

Goodman attended the Berklee College of Music as a double major focusing on both bass performance and jazz composition and arranging. This gave him the opportunity to study composition with such greats as Herb Pomeroy, Michael Gibbs, Bob Freedman and John LaPorta. He also pursued high-level studies in improvisation with Gary Burton, John Abercrombie, Jerry Bergonzi, Steve Swallow and Bruce Gertz.

An active record producer, Joel‘s producing credits include releases for Chuck Mangione, Livingston Taylor and Carla Lother. He has produced albums released by New York‘s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA,) The Whitney Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Center, among many others.

After having spent many years as a studio musician and performer in New York City, and working with legendary musicians (including Cab Calloway and Ralph Towner), Goodman was regularly called upon to compose music for hundreds of major national television advertisements including those for American Express, Budweiser, IBM, Gatorade and Procter & Gamble. During this time Goodman began scoring films, and after seeing his first two films premiere at the Sundance Film Festival he transitioned into focusing his musical acumen on film scoring (he has since had 15 Sundance FF premieres).

As a composer for film and television, Joel has scored over 150 films and television programs that have received 5 Oscar nominations, 30 Emmy awards and over 40 Emmy nominations. He has scored over 40 films for HBO and composed the Main Theme for the long-running and critically acclaimed PBS series American Experience. His scores can regularly be heard in movie theaters and on television around the world. His notable award-winning films include Obit (Amazon), Everything Is Copy (HBO), Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah (HBO), Walt Disney (PBS), An Honest Liar (Netflix), Being Elmo (PBS), Hear and Now (HBO), Valentino: The Last Emperor (Netflix), and Children Underground (HBO).

Joel has collaborated with an impressive array of distinguished directors and producers including Neil LaBute, Albert Maysles, Andrew Jarecki, Barbara Kopple, Wong Kar-wai, Rachel Grady, Marshall Curry, Sebastian Junger, Barak Goodman, Alexandra Pelosi, Michael Epstein, Oren Jacoby, Irene Taylor Brodsky, Lesli Iwerks and Fisher Stevens.

A testament to the delicate craftsmanship that Joel has mastered over the years, he recently received his 4th Emmy nomination for his score to the film Q Ball (Fox Sports), about the San Quentin prison basketball team. He has previously won an Emmy Award for his score to Saving Pelican #895 (HBO), and received Emmy nominations for his scores to The Diplomat (ESPN) and The Boys of ’36 (PBS).

Always looking to give back to his community, Joel conducts master classes and has been composer-in-residence in the US and Europe, including seminars on film music at the American Film Institute, USC, Berklee College of Music, University of North Texas, AFI Docs, The Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Denmark, Columbia College Chicago and the International Documentary Association’s Getting Real conference. He is also a regular panelist for such organizations as ASCAP, PMA, IFP, AFI and SCL amongst others.

Now living in Los Angeles but keeping his New York roots close to him, Joel enjoys riding his bicycle in challenging locations around the world and, of course, many hours writing music.