Joe Duddell was born in 1972 and studied music at Salford University and then with Steve Martland at the Royal Academy of Music, where he became Composition Fellow. He spent four years as Lecturer in Composition at Exeter University after which he joined the staff of Brunel University.  In September 2007 he took up the position of Reader in Music at Salford University.

His works have been performed at many major festivals and venues and he has received several commissions from the BBC, including Parallel Lines for the percussionist Colin Currie, The Realside for the BBC Singers' 75th Anniversary, and Vaporize for Paul Lewis and Steve Osborne's Proms chamber music recital in 2000. Duddell has featured strongly in the Proms: in 2002 he was part of the King's Singers' Orianna project and in 2003 his percussion concerto Ruby was premiered by Colin Currie and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop.  It immediately received further performances in both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and the European Young Musician of the Year contests.

Snowblind, a concertante work for Colin Currie and the BT Scottish Ensemble, was toured in Scotland and taken to Europe in 2002.  Not Waving but Drowning, Duddell's first major orchestral work, commissioned by the BBC and written for Catherine Bott and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, was premièred at the 2002 Huddersfield Festival. It was nominated for the BBC Radio 3 Listeners Award in the first British Composer Awards in December 2003. His cello concerto, Shadowplay, commissioned by Sinfonia ViVA! for their 21st birthday season, received its first performance by Thomas Carroll and ViVA! under Nicholas Kok, in April at the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham. Shadowplay was repeated at the 2003 Lichfield Festival, where Duddell was composer-in-residence and has since been performed by Carroll with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

2004 saw premieres of two new chamber orchestra works; New Dawn Fades for The London Strings and Mnemonic, commissioned by the Presteigne Festival.  Duddell was commissioned again for the 2007 festival to write a short string quartet, Four (mere) Bagatelles, and he will be Composer-in-Residence there in 2008.

A further work for Colin Currie, Freaky Dancer for vibraphone and guitar quartet, was commissioned by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and toured With Currie throughout the USA.  It has subsequently been recorded for Telarc. 

Isolation for chamber orchestra was a commission from Orchestra of the Swan, and is one of the works they plan to record on a CD of Duddell’s chamber orchestra music.  Duddell’s current commissions include an orchestral work for the London Symphony Orchestra, a symphonic wind band work for the Royal Marines Band, and a piano trio for the 2008 Presteigne Festival.