Joseph Fitzmartin

Joseph "Joe" Fitzmartin was born in 1943 in Philadelphia and studied piano, organ and music theory privately for twelve years before studying composition and conducting at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Joe’s first major post was at Girard College in Philadelphia where he served for ten years as Organist and Choir Director. He was also the Associate Director and Accompanist for the Philadelphia Boys Choir and Chorale, a post he held for twenty-one years before founding the Commonwealth Youthchoirs. The CY presently consists of the Keystone State Boychoir, and the Pennsylvania Girlchoir. He was also the Choir Director and Organist for 24 years at Collenbrook United Church in Springfield, Pennsylvania. He continues to teach full time, and directs five choirs (Quaker's Dozen, Charter Singers, Sharped Flats, Penn Singers, and TestosterTones) at the prestigious William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia. At Penn Charter he is the director of the Quaker's Dozen, and the Boy's A Capella.

Fitzmartin holds writer/publisher memberships in the American Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers. A recipient of private, corporate and government commissions, he has composed and arranged extensively for both choir and orchestra (published by Hinshaw and Columbia Pictures Publications) one of which was performed at the Academy of Music by the Philadelphia Orchestra. His Concert Mass, a major work for symphony orchestra and choir, received its world premier at Carnegie Hall and has since been performed in Australia at the Sydney Opera House, in Berlin, and in Russia by the Novgorod Symphony.

He recently won an international composition competition and, in recognition of his long career composing music for children, was awarded a grant from the Basel Boys Choir of Switzerland to compose a major work for an international celebration of youth choirs. The work featured the German text of the internationally renowned poet Hans Dieter Hüsch and continues to be performed throughout that country.

Fitzmartin has successfully combined a rewarding career as a free-lance composer/arranger with a long and fruitful vocation as a conductor and teacher.