Clarinetist and ethnomusicologist Joel Rubin is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Music Performance in the McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he is also on Jewish Studies faculty. He attended the California Institute of the Arts and received a BFA in clarinet performance from the Purchase Conservatory (State University of New York, College at Purchase, 1978). His principal teachers were Richard Stoltzman and Kalmen Opperman. Rubin holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from City University of London (2001) for his pioneering work on improvisation and ornamentation in klezmer clarinet music.
Joel Rubin has long been considered by many to be the leading performer of Jewish instrumental klezmer music in the world today, earning accolades from sources as diverse as klezmer giants Dave Tarras and Max Epstein, international clarinet soloist Richard Stoltzman, avant garde composer John Zorn, and Nobel Prize Laureate and poet Roald Hoffmann.