Justin Scott Perkins (born June 25, 1980) is an international prize-winning composer of vocal music, an award-winning scholar, and a professor at California State University, Sacramento.
Notable works include A Word Out of The Sea (2003, winner of a BMI Student Composer Award[2]), The Stolen Child (2006), Charon (2012; libretto by Nat Cassidy; commissioned by the Kennedy Center and Washington National Opera[3]), and A New England Requiem (2016).
[4] Since 2020, Perkins's music has been mostly extended, secular, choral works that support and illuminate the words of contemporary authors on themes of social justice, environmentalism, and mental health.
Perkins studied music theory and composition with Martin Amlin, Richard Cornell, Charles Fussell, and Marjorie Merryman at the Boston University College of Fine Arts.
He gave the keynote address and a paper on the history and reception of Olivier Messiaen’s work in the United States as part of the celebrations for the 75th anniversary of the premiere of the Quartet for the End of Time in Zgorzelec, Poland.