Joseph Shirley is an American composer. After graduating from Loyola University in 2010, Shirley moved to Los Angeles and joined the University of Southern California’s Screen Scoring graduate program, a competitive year-long program which only accepts 20 students at a time. Shirley said his time in the program helped him a lot with his career. “The greatest lesson that I learned is to do what it takes to write a good piece of music,” he said. “Work with it, dedicate yourself to it, and invest in yourself emotionally.”