Joel Rubin is Associate Professor of Music and director of Music Performance at the University of Virginia. He attended the California Institute of the Arts and received a BFA in clarinet performance from the State University of New York 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). Rubin has concertized throughout Europe, North America and Asia.

An internationally acclaimed performer of klezmer music, Rubin has been the founder and clarinetist of some of the most internationally respected ensembles, including the Joel Rubin Ensemble and Brave Old World. He also performs with the R2G Klezmer Trio, and collaborates regularly with renowned artists such as the trio Veretski Pass, composer and jazz pianist Uri Caine, and accordionist and pianist Alan Bern.

A respected ethnomusicologist, Rubin is co-author of the books "Klezmer-Musik" (Bärenreiter/dtv, 1999) and "Jüdische Musiktraditionen" (Jewish Musical Traditions; Gustav Bosse-Verlag, 2001). He wrote the notes to the CD anthology, Chekhov’s Band: Eastern European Klezmer Music from the EMI Archives 1908-1913 (Renair Records, 2015). Rubin’s work on Jewish music in contemporary Germany has appeared in Ethnomusicology Forum (2015) and the collection Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture (Oxford University Press, 2014). He has articles forthcoming in the Cambridge Companion to Jewish Music and the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Prior to UVa, he taught at Cornell University, Syracuse University, Ithaca College and Humboldt Universität Berlin.