BIO

Conductor and composer Joseph Bozich builds shared musical experiences that connect audiences to the vast inner world of the orchestral repertoire. He brings to the podium fifteen years of experience across symphonic, operatic, and contemporary music; in 2025 he was a prizewinner at the Khachaturian International Conducting Competition in Yerevan, where he received the award for “Best Interpretation of a Work by Aram Khachaturian” with the Armenian State Symphony. He also brings the ear of a composer whose works have been performed around the globe by ensembles and organizations including the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, the Eötvös Foundation, and the Albany Symphony.

In 2025 Bozich conducted the American premiere of Sibelius's only opera, Jungfrun i tornet, in Jordan Hall, 129 years after its composition, on a program including the world premiere of his own From the Valley of Dry Bones for viola and orchestra. He made his Boston Symphony Hall debut in 2022, stepping in on short notice to lead a full production of Verdi's La traviata with professional soloists and the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. He has covered over twenty-seven opera productions between BYSO’s annual opera, the Hungarian State Opera, Juilliard Opera, Opera Maine, Pittsburgh Festival Opera, Miami Music Festival, and Opera Neo, and has coached in Italian, German, French, Finland-Swedish, and English. Other appearances include covering Sylvain Cambreling at the Grand Rapids Symphony and appearing as a guest conductor with the HUST Symphony Orchestra (Wuhan, China) and the Octava Chamber Orchestra (Seattle, WA).

Bozich was a Conducting Fellow of the Verbier Festival in 2026, where he assisted James Gaffigan on Verdi's La traviata with the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra, covered Gábor Takács-Nagy and Mikhail Pletnev with the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, and prepared and rehearsed Bruckner's Seventh Symphony for Lahav Shani with the Verbier Festival Orchestra. As a Conducting Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival in 2023, he led performances of works by Saariaho, Ravel, and Beethoven, along with the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the winner of the AMFS concerto competition, working with Robert Spano, Mark Stringer, and Patrick Summers. He has also been a conducting associate at the Cabrillo Festival and a conducting fellow with Ensemble Ars Nova and the Peter Eötvös Foundation in Budapest as part of their “Eötvös 80” Workshop. His principal conducting teacher is Stefan Asbury; other mentors include Federico Cortese, Johannes Schlaefli, Brad Lubman, Gerard Schwarz, and Kenneth Kiesler.

As a composer, Bozich writes music that balances kinetic musical geometries, operatic intensity, and introspective spirituality. Selected by Philippe Manoury for the Ink Still Wet fellowship at the 2023 Grafenegg Festival, he composed and conducted The Widening Gyre with the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich. He was a participant in Christopher Theofanidis’ workshop with the Albany Symphony, whose ensemble gave the first public reading of his City in Stasis in 2026, and of the Peter Eötvös Foundation's “Kurtág 100” masterclass with Thomas Adès, for which he wrote Oheim, waz wirret dir? for solo cimbalom. His saxophone quartet Babel won the 2014 Sinta Quartet Commissioning Competition and appears on the quartet's debut album Collider; his Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano was released on saxophonist Lucas Hopkins's debut album Nostos. Other commissioners include Kenneth Radnofsky, Latitude 49, the Departure Duo, and the Calgary Wind Symphony. Other composition mentors include Bright Sheng and Efstratios Minakakis.

Bozich has been Associate Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras since 2019; he is a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate in orchestral conducting at the New England Conservatory in the studio of Stefan Asbury, and holds a Master of Music in orchestral conducting from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Kenneth Kiesler. In addition to conducting and composing, he is an active pianist and award-winning classical saxophonist, currently residing in Boston.