Jocelyn Morlock
1969
Present
Jocelyn Morlock is a composer living in Vancouver, Canada, the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh First Nations. Her music is inspired by birds, insomnia, nature, fear, other people’s music and art, nocturnal wandering thoughts, lucid dreaming, death, and the liminal times and experiences before and after death.
Morlock was the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s first female Composer-in-Residence (2014- 2019), and inaugural Composer-in-Residence for Vancouver’s Music on Main (2012-2014.) She won a 2018 JUNO for her piece My Name is Amanda Todd – an elegy for and celebration of the life of Amanda Todd, a young woman whose message of hope, empathy, and tolerance has caused a groundswell of support and awareness around bullying, cyber abuse and internet safety; she believes in the proliferation of positive energy that a large group of people can create together through many small actions. She writes music that is very personal and draws on her own life experiences. She recently had the opportunity to be one of six participating artists creating an imagined composition with of-the-now: Decolonial Imaginings, curated by Dylan Robinson and Mitch Reynaud. As a listener and music educator, she has a broad-ranging interest in all kinds and styles of music and is very grateful to be living in a time and place where we can hear so many diverse voices express their identity in music.