About Joel

Librettist / Lyricist --- Composer / Arranger

JOEL ADLEN

THEATER:

In collaboration with composer Leonard Moors, Joel provided the book and lyrics to Suddenly Supernatural (AEA stage reading 2024, Open Jar Studios, NYC), A Room with a View, The Enemy, based on Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, and Petrified, a full-length musical version based on his original play. As librettist and playwright, Joel’s works include Social Insecurity, Facing East, Magical Thinking, and two short plays, The Music Lesson and Petrified (a winner of the Rochester Short Play competition, MN, 2010, reprised in 2014.) Joel adapted Jane Austen’s novel, Emma, writing book, music and lyrics, winning the Los Angeles Elate Theatre Award, and an official selection of the New York Musical Theatre Festival (2007). As co-librettist and composer of the musical, Tea and Crumpets, Joel won the San Francisco/Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award and the Festival Theater USA/USC theater award for Best Original Production, which toured in the U.S. and Scotland. Joel lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is a member of ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild.

MUSIC:

ARRANGER for live performance:
- "The Moldau" by Bedřich Smetana, Arranger for chamber version of orchestral score, for piano, violin, viola, and two cellos. Golden Gate Chamber Players - forthcoming performance, Summer 2026

- "12 Christmas Carols"- arrangements for cello, piano, and optional voice.[Private Commission] / December 2025

- Holiday Concert - Arranger for 12 Traditional holiday music for piano, violin, viola and cello Golden Gate Chamber Players/ The Arbor, Berkeley, CA December 2025

- "Beethoven–Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op.11" Transcriber (clarinet/violin to cello), Golden Gate Chamber Players/ The Arbor, Berkeley, CA August 2025

ARRANGER for Publications:

Unexpected Duets for two Cellos (Composer/Arranger): A spin of new music accompanying really old pedagogy, based on Alwin Schroeder's 170 Foundation Studies for Violoncello. Forthcoming (JW Pepper publisher)
Duets for two Cellos Volume 2. A continuation of easy to Intermediate arrangements of works of Beethoven, Mozart, and others. For beginner and intermediate cellists. Forthcoming: (JW Pepper publisher) 2026
12 Christmas Carols - arrangements for cello, piano and optional voice. (Sheet Music Plus, Sheet Music Direct, JW Pepper) 2025
Holiday Music -- 10 arrangements of holiday classics arranged for violin, viola, cello and piano. (Sheet Music Plus, Sheet Music Direct) 2025
Duets for two Cellos Volume 1. 24 duets easy to Intermediate arrangements of works of Bach, Telemann, Handel, Scarlatti, and others. For beginner and intermediate cellists. (JW Pepper publisher) 2025

Composer (in addition to Theater):

Silent Films by commission: The Scarlet Letter; St. Mary's Candlelight Concerts, San Francisco, 2012, Peter Pan and The Sheik; Castro Theater, San Francisco, 2005; Peter Pan and Rin Tin Tin S. F. Film Preservation Society (at the Former Fine Arts Cinema, Berkeley) 2002; Wind, La Maison du Mystère, Backstairs, Nana, The General Line, Dr. Mabuse, The Fall of the House of Usher, and Battleship Potemkin, plus many short-subject films, Pacific Film Archive, UC Berkeley, in Berkeley California, 2000-2003.