Josiah Tayag Catalan (he/him) is a Filipino-American composer born in New York City and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recently, his compositional interests have become centered around the discovering the intersects of musics influenced by traditional, avant-garde, popular, and indigenous Philippine musics. He has been a finalist in the Thailand International Competition Festival and has been awarded prizes from NACUSA, the Sacramento State Festival of New American Music, the Megalopolis Saxophone Orchestra, the American Prize Composer's Awards, and the San Francisco Contempoary Music Players. Josiah has previously served as a Fromm Foundation Composer Fellow in the Composer's Conference, and as a Bilinski Fellow at the University of California at Davis. His music has been commissioned and performed internationally by individuals and groups such as the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Earplay, Empyrean Ensemble, Lydian and Arditti String Quartets, the MANA saxophone quartet,The Megalopolis Saxophone Orchestra, Citywater, violinist Miranda Cuckson, percussionist Chris Froh, and soprano Helena Sorokina. His music is published by BabelScores.

 

Currently, Josiah is teaching as a lecturer in Music Theory, Composition, and World Music at Sacramento State and UC Davis and received his PhD at UC Davis in composition and music theory and is serving as the Composer-in-Residence for the Diablo Symphony of the 2024-2025 Season. He is a tennis and baseball nerd who plays competitively and often travels and hikes around Northern California with his wife and adopted mutt.