Joseph Zitt's vocal performance combines a background in traditional synagogue and world musics with a mastery of extended vocal techniques. While he often approaches performance non-verbally, focusing on the vocal sounds themselves rather than the meanings of words, he also includes moving and surprising uses of text in work that straddles the line between music and poetry. In his solo and ensemble performances and workshops, he works to create music that is both complex and clear, exemplifying the best that each person can bring to free and structured improvisation.

His recent recording, All Souls, in collaboration with Thomas Bickley, presents a free long-form improvisation, created on the spot with intertwining voices exploring the architecture and objects in a resonant room and its surroundings. His latest recording, Collaborations, captures live improvisations performed with bassists F. Vattel Cherry and Jane Wang, with percussionist Brian Fending, and with guitarist Jonathan Matis (both members, along with Zitt, Bickley, and Matthew Ross Davis, of the ensemble Gray Code), as well as a studio collaborations with Thomas Bickley and Craque.

His newest book, Surprise Me With Beauty: the Music of Human Systems, collects writings and scores from over 20 years that present and embody new visions of human interaction through structured group improvisation. Believing, as John Cage said, that "the performance of a piece of music can be a metaphor ... of how we want society to be", Zitt develops and discusses the creation of ensemble musics that are clear, multifaceted, and enjoyable. These scores help reveal and encourage people's strengths in performance while allowing for acceptance of and recovery from honest human frailty and error.

Composer Pauline Oliveros has called the book "a wonderful invitation to participate in making music for musicians, interested people, and educators. These scores will encourage you to sound the silenced self."

Joseph Zitt studied cantorial music at Yeshiva University, electronic and ethnic music and composition at Rutgers University with Daniel Goode, Phillip Corner, and Barbara Benary, and voice with Martha Randall.

He has performed in a wide variety of solo and ensemble contexts, including performing with the ensemble Comma in Pauline Oliveros's "Lunar Opera" at Lincoln Center in New York City, and with the ensemble Gray Code at the Knitting Factory in New York and at the 2001 Vision Festival in Washington, DC. He has worked extensively in the realms of free and structured improvisation with musicians including Toshi Makihara, John Berndt, LaDonna Smith, Thom the World Poet, and Philip Gelb. In annual tours of Texas, his group QslashC, a large and varied ensemble of musicians, poets, and dancers, explores improvisation methods and structures in engaging (and often hilarious) events. He has also led the Human Systems Performance Group, which moves among dance, theatrical, musical, and video performance to develop effective multimedia events, and created electronic theatre scores for the PAM Repertory Company in Brooklyn, NY.

His recordings includes Comma's (voices) and Gray Code's Live in Philadelphia 2000 on the Metatron Press label, the solo CD Jerusaklyn from MP3.com, and the vocal solo "mouth. midnight." on the lowercase compilation on the Bremsstrahlung label. His other works include the book Shekhinah: The Presence from Metatron Press and the ambient video dance work, Gentle Entropy, each of which has accompanying CDs from the MP3.com label.