Joe Williams, M. M. is a sound liberator and arts leader from Tacoma, WA. He serves on the Tacoma Arts Commission and the national DEI committee for Music Teachers National Association. He is an advisory board member of New Music Initiative for Black Voices as well as Ebony Music, Inc. He is Director of Music and Arts at Plymouth Church in downtown Seattle, WA.

His curatorial work is recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts (2023 grant recipient) and his research has been supported by the Society for American Music (2022 Paul Charosh Independent Scholar Fellowship recipient). Last year, he served as Sound Salon’s guest artistic director to produce a virtual portrait concert highlighting the chamber music of Brian Raphael Nabors (b. 1991). Williams is currently co-authoring “Keyboard Works of Florence B. Price” with musicologist Dr. Gwynne Kuhner Brown for a forthcoming publication, The Cambridge Companion to Florence B Price (Cambridge University Press, ed. Samantha Ege & A Kori Hill).

While Williams has performed classical piano repetoire across the U.S.A. and abroad in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, he has only began to lean into life as a composer since the global pandemic’s arrival. He is currently collaborating with poet Sah Pham to create a water-inspired piece promoting themes of adolescent mental wellness and belonging, set to be premiered by the Tacoma Youth Symphony and Tacoma Youth Chorus in 2025. As part of its Cartography Project, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts recently commissioned Williams to write a hip-hopera addressing gentrification in collaboration with spoken word artist Nakeya Isabel.

Previous appointments include staff instrumental collaborative pianist at Oberlin Conservatory, coach at Portland Opera, instructor of piano and American music history at Interlochen Arts Camp, and behavior therapist at Center for Autism and Related Disorders. This Summer, Williams will join an inaugural delegation of six Tacoma-based artists and policymakers assembled by internationally acclaimed artist Anida Yoeu Ali in order to build relationships throughout Yogjakarta, Indonesia’s creative economy.