Emily Joy Sullivan

Emily Joy Sullivan is a composer, choir director, and educator from Buffalo, NY. She holds a B.A. in Music, Magna Cum Laude, from Amherst College and an M.S. in Early Childhood and Childhood General Education from the Bank Street College of Education. Ms. Sullivan is currently working towards a Master's Degree in Music Composition at SUNY Fredonia, where she studies with Paul Coleman; she has also studied with Eric Sawyer, Peter Klatzow, and Robert Deemer. Ms. Sullivan’s music is characterized by lyricism and lush expressivity, and is deeply influenced by folk, pop, and world music. Ms. Sullivan loves writing musical theater, and is especially interested in writing for the female voice. She strives to incorporate her feminist principles into her compositions, writing songs that give characters agency and expressivity. 

Ms. Sullivan continues to teach, and has been active in directing and/or founding singing groups for the last ten years. She received a 2012 Davis Projects for Peace grant to bring together South African youths of different backgrounds through community choral singing. She also fundraised for and founded a youth choir in Queens, NY.  Her community choir in New York touched the lives of adults from dozens of countries, and continues to perform six years on. She is currently “spreading seeds” through her role designing and teaching Chorus and Music Theory curricula at the Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology.