Peter Josheff

Ensembles: Earplay, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Sonic Harvest, Eco Ensemble, Empyrean Ensemble, Opera Parallèle.

Education: UC-Berkeley, UW-Madison, Lawrence University

Hometown: Madison, WI, USA

Favorite piece to play: Every Grain of Sand by Bob Dylan

Peter Josheff, composer and clarinetist, has been a mainstay of the northern California new music community for forty years. He is a founding member of Earplay (1985) and of Sonic Harvest (2000). He is a core member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Empyrean Ensemble (at UC Davis), the Eco Ensemble (at UC Berkeley), and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. He performs frequently with Opera Parallele, and is an Instructor of Clarinet at the University of California, Berkeley.

Peter's music has been performed by many ensembles and individual performers: the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra (The Dream Mechanic); the Farallon Quintet (Groundhog Day); Earplay (House & Garden Tales, Sextet, Waiting, Big Brother); the Empyrean Ensemble (Prosperous Soul - Gregarious Heart, Viola & Mallets); Dan Flanagan, violin (September, Same Old Sadness); Rufus Olivier, bassoon (Elegy, Dewy not - dewy got); Haruka Fujii, percussion (Home Brew); Brenda Tom Vahur, piano (Sutro Tower in the Fog, Warped Oracle, Rag Wrung Dry, Exquisite Corpus); Brian Thorsett, tenor (The Cauldron, The Dream Mechanic, Europa & The Bull); and many others, including numerous premieres with Sonic Harvest. He recently completed Root Cellar (2024), a work for solo piano.

In his spare time Peter is an amateur guitarist/singer/songwriter.