Before heading to one of only three American MFA Film Scoring Programs at UNC School of the Arts, James Niles Joyal was a self-taught composer, pianist, and songwriter from Massachusetts. He has relentlessly pursued success, despite a long series of hardships---most recently, the death of his father to cancer in January 2009, whom James cared for alongside his mother for the nine months which followed his graduation from Boston College in May 2008.
At Boston College, Joyal was the #1 ranked student in the music department. During his senior year, he used unprecedented research for his paper, Music to Impress the Heart, Not the Mind: Straightforward Emotional Expression in Contemporary Film Scores . He also concentrated in business and film at BC; in the film department, he took all three of screenwriter Drew Yanno's courses.
He is blessed with world-ranking memorizing abilities which enhance his composing. On Pi Day (3/14) 2008, James tripled the Harvard College Pi Recitation record, reciting 3,141 digits of the non-repeating, infinitely long mathematical constant pi from memory. Although Joyal has stated he will never return to pi, he once memorized 1,491 digits in a day, and once knew a total of 13,141 digits. Read the Boston Globe front page article.
A self-proclaimed Renaissance Man, Joyal is a motivational speaker, theoretical mathematician, and philosophical essayist. His passions are people and love. When the opportunity is available, James Niles Joyal also performs as a director, stand-up comic, lyricist/librettist, and volunteer juggler & entertainer. He has twice donated his acting and singing talents to traveling children's musicals, each reaching more than 5000 children at Massachusetts schools during their run. His hilarious dance moves are the stuff of legends.
