Joseph Rivers composes music for film, concert hall, dance and stage. He received the 2007 Oklahoma Commissioned Composers Award from the Oklahoma Music Teachers Association for Violin, Violoncello, and Piano, reflecting native Oklahoma history and landscapes on the occasion of the Oklahoma state centennial. The three movements are entitled, I. Water Wind Sky, II. Agehya's Love, and III. Forest Journey. The newly composed Concerto for Oboe, English Horn and String Orchestra was commissioned by oboist Lise Glaser in 2009 and will premiere in March. Rivers’ orchestral tone poem, Echoes of War-Visions of Peace, commissioned and premiered by the Signature Symphony of Tulsa, was recorded by the Czech Philharmonic under the direction of Robert Winstin for inclusion on Volume 15 of ERMMedia Masterworks of the New Era CD series, which was released in December 2009. Another CD, Nuova Avventura, released in 2010, includes some of his piano and instrumental compositions that appeal to a broad range of listeners. Other compositions celebrating the Oklahoma state centennial include Will Rogers Self-Portrait, for mixed chorus and chamber orchestra (or piano), commissioned by the Will Rogers Heritage, Inc. and the Claremore Community Chorus.; a one-act opera, Prairie Dreams, about pioneer Oklahoma; and Lonely People of the Osage, a choral setting of the beautiful poem by Oklahoma poet Winston Weathers about the Osage people near Tulsa. He recently completed the musical score to the feature film, Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Bo Bergstrom (2010), and Brother Mine, directed by Nathan McLeod (2008). He has worked as an independent composer and orchestrator in the Los Angeles area and is presently Professor of Music and Film Studies at the University of Tulsa.