Joel Braun is Associate Professor of Double Bass at the University of Texas at Austin.  As an orchestral musician he has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the Israel Philharmonic.  He is a former member of the Ft. Wayne Philharmonic and currently serves as Assistant Principal Bass of the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra under the direction of Gerard Schwarz.  As a soloist and chamber musician, he has concertized at major universities, conservatories, and music festivals throughout the United States.  Much of his recent work involves collaborating with contemporary composers.  He has premiered works by Olga Magidenko, Rain Worthington, Manuel Sosa, and Behzad Ranjbaran.  “Unaccompanied”, his premiere solo recording, was released in 2022 on the Centaur Records Label and features his own composition “Awake”, which won honorable mention in the unaccompanied category of the 2022 ISB/David Walter Composition Competition.  As an in-demand pedagogue, he has presented master classes at institutions such as the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Mannheim, Germany, the Universidad Nacional de Música in Lima, Perú, and Indiana University, among many others. He has held faculty positions at Ball State University and The Juilliard School Pre-College Division.  His principal study was with Eugene Levinson at The Juilliard School where he earned a Pre-College Diploma, B.M., and M.M. degrees.