Deanna Joseph

Ensembles and Conducting: Choirs

Director of Choral Activities

Coordinator of Ensembles and Conducting

Dr. Deanna Joseph is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at the Georgia State University School of Music where she conducts the University Singers and leads the master’s program in choral conducting.  A recent review of her work states, “[t]he choir sings with great musicality, excellent intonation, clear diction, and a healthy and beautiful pallet of tone colors…” (The Choral Scholar).

Dr. Joseph’s teaching and scholarship has been recognized with several awards, including the Georgia State University College of the Arts Outstanding Faculty Achievement Award in 2021, and in 2019, the Georgia State University Alumni Distinguished Professor Award, a university-wide award given to “a model of the teacher-scholar ideal.”  In 2015, she was selected from over 800 faculty members to receive the College of Arts and Sciences’ Outstanding Teacher Award

Under Dr. Joseph’s direction, the Georgia State University Singers have been invited to perform at two national conferences of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), in 2021 and in 2025, and perform regularly at ACDA regional and Georgia Music Educators Association state conferences.

In April of 2023, the Georgia State University Singers performed two concerts at the World Symposium on Choral Music in Istanbul, Turkey.  In May of 2017, the University Singers under won first place in the renowned Marktoberdorf International Chamber Choir Competition while on a concert tour of Austria and Bavaria.  In May of 2013, the University Singers competed in La Florilège Vocal de Tours where the choir placed second overall in the mixed choir category and Dr. Joseph was honored with the Prix du chef de choer (conducting prize).

During Dr. Joseph’s tenure, the Georgia State University Choirs have been hired to sing two productions of David Bintley’s Carmina Burana with the Atlanta Ballet: in 2013 (North American premiere performances) and 2017 as well as several collaborations with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Opera, the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, and Andrea Bocelli.

The choir’s three professional recording, Evening Hymn, Heavenly Display: Songs Inspired by Shaker Tunes, and Requiem (Gothic Records), are distributed internationally by Naxos.  The American Record Guide review  of Evening Hymn states “There are no runts in the repertory litter…[and] [t]he Georgia State choir of 40 is very good at all of it: radiant as dusk approaches, but hushed and sensitive to the coming darkness as shadows deepen and fall.” All three disks have been featured several times on National Public Radio’s program, With Heart and Voice.

Dr. Joseph is an active guest conductor and headline clinician and has conducted all-state and honor choirs in more than twenty-five states. She is a frequent conductor of choral-orchestral repertoire and has led performances of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Beethoven Mass in C, Mozart’s Requiem, Duruflé Requiem, Haydn’s Creation and Lord Nelson Mass, Handel’s Dixit Dominus, Schubert’s Mass in A-flat and Bruckner’s Mass in D Minor.

Dr. Joseph’s research in 19th-century choral-orchestral performance-practice has led to invited presentations on the topic at several division conferences of the American Choral Director’s Association and at the national convention for the National Collegiate Choral Organization. In October of 2012, she was selected as one of 25 presenters from ten countries to speak at the Lund Choral Festival in Sweden.

Prior to her appointment at Georgia State University, Dr. Joseph served on the faculties at Smith College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Dr. Joseph holds conducting degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where she was awarded the Walter Hagen Conducting Prize.  She is the founder and artistic director of the Atlanta Summer Conducting Institute (ASCI), a weeklong, summer conducting master class that draws conductors from across the country.