Joseph Walsh is an accomplished conductor, music director, coach and pianist with three decades of experience in preparing, presenting and conducting opera and musical theater in Virginia, across the U.S. and internationally. He is admired for his ability to combine dramatic flair and theatrical excitement with sensitivity, detail and a keen sense of dramatic pacing. Recently he was music director for The Nance at 1^st Stage Theatre, Tysons, as well as The Pirates of Penzance at Riverside Dinner Theater. Joe has performed extensively in the Washington DC area professional theaters, including Christmas at the Old Bull and Bush, George, Don’t Do That! and Master Class, at Alexandria’s Metro Stage and with the In Series where he debuted with a production of Kabarett & Cabaret, conducted performances of Fidelio and opened their 2016-2017 season with a double bill of La Serva Padrona and Trial by Jury.

He was involved in the musical preparation of more than 65 productions at Virginia Opera, where he served for 17 years, most recently as associate artistic director and conducted productions of Madame Butterfly, Don Giovanni, The Daughter of the Regiment and Susannah, among many others. Subsequently for three years he was general director with Lyric Opera Virginia, where among many highlights he conducted The King and I with Broadway stars Lisa Vroman and Kevin Grey. Joe has been music director for productions at The Delaware Children’s Theatre and Three Little Baker’s Dinner Theater, both in Wilmington, Delaware. Mr. Walsh is an active recitalist, accompanying both classical voice recitals and Broadway cabarets.

Joe serves as president of the Board of Directors of Orvieto Musica, a three-week festival for musicians held each summer in Orvieto, Italy. He just returned from the 2024 festival as a guest artist with the Intensive Voice Program. Joe conducted for five summers at the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy and for two summers at the GMU Korean Summer Institute in Seoul. Joe has conducted many orchestras in performances including the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, the Kansas City Symphony, the Cluj-Napoca Philharmonic Orchestra of Romania and the Collegium Philarmonicum of Naples, Italy. He served as assistant conductor for two summer programs at the Maputo Music Festival in Mozambique, Africa.

Currently, Joe is Associate Professor of Music and Theater at George Mason University in Fairfax where he recently was music director for productions of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury, Once Upon a Mattress, 9 to 5, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Head Over Heels, Footloose, Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon, Rags, Big River, Merrily We Roll Along, Dido and Aeneas, La Bohème, Iolanthe, The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute.

He has taught numerous voice master classes and judged many vocal competitions, including the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions (Middle Atlantic District), The National Society of Arts and Letters’ DC Chapter’s, as well as the National Level Dorothy Lincoln Smith Voice Competition, Partners for the Arts Vocal Competition and the Charles Williams Voice Competition at Levine Music, where he has also served on the faculty. Mr. Walsh has served as artistic advisor for the classical voice programs offered by the Washington D.C. chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters. Mr. Walsh has served on the Virginia Commission for the Arts Touring Panel, as well as on the coaching faculties of the Esther Boyer College of Music at Temple University in Philadelphia and the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. He has written several children’s opera programs, including Giovanni and the Beanstalk and The Wonderful Wizard of Opera which have toured schools throughout Virginia. Mr. Walsh maintains a private coaching studio at his home in Ashburn, Virginia. .