Joshua Ballance is a British conductor who specialises in contemporary music.

He is conductor of Mad Song, an ensemble dedicated to 20th & 21st century music, and Artistic Director of the High Barnet Chamber Music Festival. A performance of Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen was highly praised: "The combination of naïveté and alienation was spot on, allied to fine command of line and tempo" (Seen and Heard International) and his programming has been described as "seriously thoughtful" (Michael White).

​

Ballance has worked with contemporary music ensembles around the UK and abroad, including Ensemble Modern, Linea Ensemble, and the City University Pierrot Players. Alongside these, he has conducted orchestras around the UK, including the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Orion Orchestra, New London Orchestra, Hereford Symphony Orchestra, Leicester Symphony Orchestra, and Burford Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with soloists including Benedict Nelson, Bartholomew LaFollette, and Rebekah Jones, and premiered works by composers including Katherine Balch, Rob Hao, Carol J. Jones, Ian Pace, Benjamin Lavastre, David Palmer, and Anna Semple. Ballance is also a committed pedagogue: he supervises at Cambridge University and teaches every year on the renowned Pro Corda chamber-music courses.

​

His interest in conducting began with the student conducting programme of the London Schools' Symphony Orchestra, under Peter Ash, before going on to study with Roland Melia. After degrees in academic music at Cambridge and Oxford, he studied conducting at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University, in the studio of Professor Alexis Hauser. He was kindly supported by a Schulich Scholarship and the Wirth Graduate Excellence Award. Whilst at Cambridge, he won the Cambridge University Symphony Orchestra conducting competition, and was appointed their Senior Conductor. He has also participated in masterclasses, including with David Robertson, Andrew Gourlay, Michael Seal and Nicholas Cleobury.​

​

Ballance has a strong academic background. Before moving to Montréal he achieved a DPhil at Christ Church, Oxford, generously supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and supervised by Professor Jonathan Cross. His thesis applied computational methods to the analysis of harmony in the music of Anton Webern. He has presented his work at conferences around the world, and was awarded a prestigious Mitacs Globalink Doctoral Partnership to support a 3-month exchange at the University of British Columbia. Prior to this he was at King's College, Cambridge, where he read for his undergraduate degree, achieving a double first, and an MPhil, which was awarded with Distinction. Whilst pursuing these degrees, he was awarded an academic scholarship, and received various prizes and grants for his academic work.

​

As a composer, Ballance has studied composition with Dr Sinan Savaskan, Dr Christian Mason, and Professor Julian Anderson. He has also received tuition from Raymond Yiu and Marc Andre, amongst others. He has been commissioned by ensembles including Ensemble Erable, the Octandre Ensemble, No Dice Collective, King's Voices, and the New London Children's Choir, and festivals including the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music, the Ludlow English Song Weekend, and Oxford Contemporary Opera. He spent a year as a composer with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, and has previously attended the Darmstadt International Course for New Music. His music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and performed in many prestigious venues around the UK including Westminster Abbey, the Tate Britain Gallery, and all the major Cambridge chapels, as well as abroad in Iceland and Italy.