Contact
Departments
Music History and Literature
Education
Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology, Catholic University of America
Master of Music in Organ Performance, Northwestern University
Master of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Courses Taught
MHL 562: Redefining the Canon
Ensembles
Grace Cathedral Choir of Girls
Solo concert artist
Q&A
What is your hometown?
San Francisco
What is your favorite recording?
All Things Are Quite Silent by The Choirs of Pembroke College, Cambridge, directed by Anna Lapwood. It’s like a still point in the chaos of life, the singing is absolutely gorgeous, and I love the composers included on the album.
What are you passionate about outside of music?
Bringing down the patriarchy. I also love single malt scotch.
Who were your major teachers?
Jeremy Filsell, Douglas Cleveland, and Christa Rakich
What is a favorite quote that you repeatedly tell students?
Practice makes practice.
What was the defining moment when you decided to pursue music as a career?
After I had been accepted to medical school. Instead of going I went the opposite direction to study organ in Geneva, and while I was there I filled a trash can with all of my medical school materials and decided I’d better go practice!
If you weren't a musician or teacher, what do you think you would be doing now?
Travel writer
If you could play only three composers for the rest of your life, who would they be?
Jeanne Demessieux, Caroline Shaw, and Herbert Howells
From a music history perspective, what year and city are most important to you, and why?
Paris in any year. When I was first learning about music and the world, it sounded like Paris was the center of the universe. When I finally got to go there, I learned that it was true!
What is your unrealized project?
Recording an album of commissioned pieces for the organ
What do you think makes a concert experience unique?
Performers connecting with the audience on a human level, and not just communicating through music.
Please list your most important collaborations.
Definitely collaborating with Dr. Laura Colgate to found the Boulanger Initiative.
Biography
Dr. Joy-Leilani Garbutt is an organist, musicologist, and an ardent advocate for gender-equity in the field of music. She is the co-founder of Boulanger Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting music composed by women through performance, education, and commissions. Her advocacy of women composers has been featured in The New York Times. Joy-Leilani is the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship and spent a year in France pursuing research on early 20th-century French organ music by female composers, particularly Joséphine Boulay, Mel Bonis, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Jeanne Demessieux, Marie-Véra Maixandeau, and Henriette Puig-Roget. She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from The Catholic University of America,
a Master of Education degree from The Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Master of Music in organ performance from Northwestern University, where she served as Organ Scholar for the Alice Millar Chapel.
She has studied with Dr. Jeremy Filsell, Sophie-Veronique Cauchefer-Choplin, Douglas Cleveland, and Christa Rakich.
Joy-Leilani maintains an active concert career, exclusively performing music by underrepresented composers. She has given solo organ recitals throughout the US, and internationally in France, India, Monaco, Norway, and Switzerland.
She is based in San Francisco, California, where she is Director of Music at St. Luke's Episcopal Church and Associate Musician & Director of Girls' Choir at Grace Cathedral.