Joel Garten was born in Toronto, Canada in 1981 and has been composing music since the age of eleven. Garten has given concerts on three continents, including a memorable impromptu concert in the Shar-Dor Medrassa in Samarqand, Uzbekistan. Garten has traveled to more than twenty countries, absorbing various musical/cultural influences, including studying gamelan with an aged master in Bali, Indonesia. He is influenced by visual artists such as Pollock, Rothko and Giorgio Morandi, as well as by musical artists most notably Keith Jarrett and Morton Feldman