Joel Clarkson is a composer, author and theologian.

He began his career in film music, both as a composer and a sought-after orchestrator, and has contributed to music for numerous feature films and TV programs. As a recording artist, Clarkson has released more than a dozen recordings spanning multiple genres, from instrumental piano, to cinematic orchestral music, to choral a cappella, to singer/songwriter folk music. He has performed widely as a pianist and his compositions have been streamed millions of times.

In more recent years, Clarkson has been lauded as a composer of sacred music for both the Church and the concert house. His original settings have been performed by eminent ensembles like VOCES8 and the Vicars Choral of St Paul’s Cathedral, London.In addition to his original choral works, Clarkson has conducted choirs of various sizes on both sides of the Atlantic, and has sung as a baritone in numerous chapel choirs and cathedrals. In both his singing and his sacred composition, he specialises in the English choral tradition, and has made inroads in contemporary Catholic worship as well.

Supplementing his creative contributions to liturgy, Clarkson has spent half a decade developing a scholarly expertise in theology and the arts. He has written and spoken on a variety of topics relating to the field, including theology and film music, themes of silence and divine presence in twentieth-century composition, music and metaphysics, and the phenomenology of video games. He applies his research to advancing a deeper understanding of music as a medium of transcendence, both in both sacred and non-sacred settings.

Clarkson has written extensively on the way music and other sensory experiences shape our experience of the Divine. In 2021, he released his first solo book, Sensing God: Experiencing the Divine in Nature, Food, Music and Beauty, with NavPress. He has also written for publications like Christianity Today and Plough Quarterly, and is a regular contributor for Plough’s online feature Plough Music Series.

Clarkson was born in Vienna, Austria. He received his undergraduate degree in music composition from Berklee College of Music, summa cum laude, and obtained a masters and PhD in theology at University of St Andrews. He currently makes his home in Oxford, England.