Casino! Composer

            Joyce Whitelaw

Joyce was born in Glasgow, Scotland and graduated from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama with a dual degree-B.A. in Vocal and Piano Performance. She went on to obtain a Diploma in Secondary Music Education from St. Andrew’s College of Education, also in Scotland.  At the RSAMD her minor was languages and Joyce speaks and sings in a number of different languages.

In 1988 she moved to San Francisco, CA where she performed in several top-end restaurantes and established herself as a very popular teacher of Piano, Voice, and Composition.  Joyce relocated to the East Bay where she continues to teach, perform, and compose.

A gifted composer, in addition to Casino!, Joyce has created music for more than thirty cabaret songs, several musicals, a short modern opera, and a variety of instrumentals for soundtracks. As a highly trained singer and classical musician, Joyce has a unique set of talents with which she creates beautiful melodies for the singers and stitches them together with classical and ethnic threads drawn from diverse musical cultures. Her creations include the Italian-Scottish Opera, "Il Giocatore”, that débuted at the Julia Morgan Theatre in 2000, a Chinese Opera, and a Space Fantasia for the new millennium.  In 2003 she was commissioned to compose and perform a “Saturn Symphony” for the planetarium atthe Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland.

Last year she composed a Chinese soundtrack for Chabot’s “Dragon Skies” exhibition.  Currently, she is composing music for the Oakland Chamber of Commerce Centennial Gala and also directing the May 14, 2005 production. 

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Joyce can be contacted via E-mail: Whitelaw@netc.pt