Joe Duran

I'm a software engineer and jazz musician based in Chicago. I hold a Master's and Bachelor's in Jazz Studies from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where I studied saxophone with Rick VanMatre and composition with Kim Pensyl. As a performer, I've played lead alto with the Columbus Jazz Orchestra and the Blue Wisp Big Band, played the Spoleto Jazz Festival in Italy as a featured soloist, and performed masterclasses for Branford Marsalis and Rich Perry.

Composing has been central to my musical life. I served as Composer-In-Residence with the Cincinnati Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, was selected for the American Composers Orchestra Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, and have written for ensembles on five continents ranging from saxophone quartet to symphony orchestra. I've led groups of my own for over a decade — the Joe Duran Octet, Nonet, Projections, the Indoor Kid Ensemble, and the Halogen Group — each a different vehicle for exploring composition and improvisation.

In 2016 I transitioned into software engineering. Since then I've worked across the stack building everything from mobile applications to real-time data pipelines at scale. For the past five years I've been at Supermove, where I currently serve as Tech Lead on the AI Copilot team. I'm drawn to problems that sit at the intersection of systems design and user experience, and I bring the same instinct for structure and improvisation to code that I bring to music.