Composer Judd Greenstein was born and raised in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, where he began his compositional life by writing hip hop beats as a teenager. His concert works reflect those origins, as well as his traditional piano background, combining an urban, beat-oriented sensibility with a late Romantic classical harmonic language. A passionate advocate for the indie classical community in New York, much of Judd's work is written for the virtuosic ensembles and solo performers who make up that community, and tailored to their specific talents and abilities. 

Judd has worked closely with many of the best young solo musicians in New York City and beyond, including violist Nadia Sirota, soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird, percussionist Samuel Solomon, pianist Michael Mizrahi, flutist Alex Sopp, clarinetist Sara Phillips, saxophonists Argeo Ascani and Brian Sacawa, and cellist/vocalist Jody Redhage. He has also received performances by and commissions from a wide array of ensembles around the country, from Present Music (in Milwaukee) to the Seattle Chamber Players to the University of Texas at Austin New Music Ensemble, as well as many prominent ensembles in New York, including Newspeak, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Tactus, the Knights, and the New York Youth Symphony. His work has been heard at festivals such as the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Carlsbad Music Festival in Carlsbad, CA, the Look & Listen Festival, the TriBeCa New Music Festival, the Audio Inversions series in Austin, TX, and the Roycroft Chamber Music Festival in East Aurora, NY. International performances of Judd’s music recently took place at the Musiekgebouw in Amsterdam, Holland, by Guitar Quartet Catch; in Rome, by the Williams College Concert Choir; at the Tel Aviv Art Museum in Tel Aviv, Israel, by the Israel Contemporary String Quartet; and in the Kyiv Music Festival in the Ukraine, by the Seattle Chamber Players. He is also the composer-in-residence for Sympho, a collaborative orchestral project conceived and directed by renowned conductor Paul Haas, who recently brought the REWIND concert to San Francisco, California, and Des Moines, Iowa.

In addition to his work as a composer, Judd is active as a promoter of new music in New York and around the country. He is the director of NOW Ensemble, the composer/performer collective that has quickly established itself as one of the most prominent and promising sounds in 21st century chamber music. He is the co-director of New Amsterdam Records, the record label and interactive web community that New York Magazine critic Justin Davidson called the "virtual headquarters" of the indie classical scene in New York. In January, NOW Ensemble (along with guitar/violin duo itsnotyouitsme) sold out Joe's Pub for the release of their new record, NOW, which received five stars in Time Out New York and Time Out Chicago, and which is out on New Amsterdam. Judd is also the co-director of Free Speech Zone Productions, a presenting organization focused on music related to issues of social justice and political concerns, and he sits on the Board of Directors of NYC Performing Arts Spaces, which focuses on resolving performing artists’ needs for performance and rehearsal space.

Judd has received degrees from Williams College and the Yale School of Music, has been a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music, and is currently a fourth-year doctoral Fellow and Taplin Scholar at Princeton University, where he is writing a dissertation on hip hop music.