Joshua Roach is the Director of Instrumental Activities at Nebraska Wesleyan University where he leads the Symphonic Band and Jazz Ensemble and also teaches trumpet, conducting, and other courses in the music curriculum. He has also taught at Peru State College, The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, The College of New Jersey, California Lutheran University, and Southwest Michigan College. He has provided clinics to bands and orchestras from across the United States and has been a guest conductor for the Los Angeles Winds, cover conductor for Pacific Symphony, and assistant conductor for the Young Musician’s Foundation Debut Orchestra and the Downey Symphony Orchestra. Internationally, he has worked with the Irvine Young Concert Artists in Korea and China and also as assistant conductor for the Landesjugendorchester of Baden-Württemberg, a highly selective youth orchestra in Southern Germany.

Before pursuing teaching full-time in higher education, Roach resided in Los Angeles, where he was the music director of the Pacific Symphony Youth Wind Ensemble, instrumental coach for the “Grammy Signature School Award” Diamond Bar High School, and orchestra manager for the USC Thornton School of Music. For eleven years, he spent his summers teaching at the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program where he worked with domestic and international middle and high school students. From 2015-2017, he was on the brass staff for the Phantom Regiment drum and bugle corps. 

Ensembles in Southern California, Michigan, Ohio, and New Jersey have performed Roach’s compositions and arrangements, and his television music has been played on network broadcast shows such as Sport Science, Crime 360, Project Runway, and Last American Cowboy. He has assisted in productions by Turner Classic Films, PBS, Fox, Universal, and DreamWorks. In addition to the works available on his website, he is also published by Murphy Music Press.

Roach is a member of the National Association for Music Educators, Conductor’s Guild, College Band Directors National Association, Nebraska Music Educators Association, Nebraska State Bandmasters Association, and is an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi. At the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, he earned a bachelor of music degree in performance, graduate certificate in scoring for motion pictures and television, and a master of music degree in instrumental conducting. At the University of Michigan, he earned a doctoral degree in wind conducting. Roach’s primary conducting teachers and mentors have been Michael Haithcock, Larry Livingston, Carl St.Clair, H. Robert Reynolds and Sharon Lavery. He studied composition with Frederick Lesemann, Jack Smalley, and David Spear. He has studied trumpet performance with Boyde Hood, Timothy Morrison, Russell Plylar, Judith Saxton, and Mark Niehaus.