Joyce Marion Schirner Bozarth

Joyce Bozarth is a violinist and soprano soloist who studied with Virginia-Gene Rittenhouse at Atlantic Union College, with Jascha Brodsky at the Curtis Institute of Music, and at the Juilliard School of Music. She teaches both violin and piano and conducts seminars in church music.

Bozarth graduated from Plainfield Academy in New Jersey, and completed a degree at Washington Missionary College, now Washington Adventist University. She subsequently earned a master's degree in secondary education guidance.

Although she always considered herself a non-composer musician, she began "hearing" music to Scripture verses after surgery in 1988 for a brain tumor that removed the "fine arts" section of her brain. She has dedicated this new, highly unlikely, ability to spreading God’s word. Although her hearing of new music is a God-given ability, she continues to learn the craft of composition whenever time allows.

Bozarth has written a cantata, A Holy People, segments of which were published in 99 New Songs, a songbook edited by Evelyn Pursley Kopitzke, which was released in 2003.

ds/2012

Sources: Biography in 99 New Songs, editor, Evelyn Pursley Koptitzke, 2003; 14 May 1959, 25; 30 April 1981, 8; 28 June 1984, 13; Joyce Bozarth, "The Brain Tumor," 14 March 1996, 11; The Columbia Union Visitor, 5 April 1979, 12B.