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James Grant, DMA

For three decades, James Grant has been commissioned by individuals, choruses, chamber ensembles and orchestras who have performed his music throughout the world. As a composer of choral music, he has taken First Prize honors in three international competitions, and his orchestral overture Chart won first prize in the 1998 Louisville Orchestra competition for new orchestral music. In 2002, Grant was one of five American composers to win the Aaron Copland Award; and in 2004, he won the Sylvia Goldstein Award, sponsored by Copland House.

After completing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from Cornell University, Grant was Assistant Professor of Music at Middlebury College in Vermont between 1988-1992, where he taught composition, coordinated an American Music Week Festival each year, and directed the New Music From Middlebury concert series. In 1992, Grant left academe to compose full-time and from 1993-96 served as Composer-In-Residence to the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra in Fairfax, Virginia. In 2003, Grant completed a five-year position as Composer-In-Residence to the Bay-Atlantic Symphony in Bridgeton, New Jersey. 

Recognized by Cornell University's Graduate School of Humanities and Arts and by the Vermont chapter of the National Music Teachers Association for exceptional contributions as an educator, Grant continues to be active as a lecturer and private teacher of composition.

Grant's colorful musical language is known by musicians and audiences for its honed craft and immediacy. After the May 2003 Kennedy Center premiere of his 55-minute work for chorus and large orchestra based on the writings of Walt Whitman, Such Was The War, the Washington Times declared it “a work of outstanding power and breadth of emotion.” The Baltimore Sun wrote, “the sincerity is never in doubt, and there's an unmistakable, cumulative power generated by the text and music. Such Was the War makes an honorable contribution to the choral repertoire.”

After the October 2004 premier of Grant’s Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Strings by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel commented on a follow-up performance by the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra: “Grant here has made music that is structurally smart, emotionally probing, rhythmically clever and harmonically subtle…. The momentum builds to some hair-raising hyena howls that had the audience howling back in approval when the 15-minute concerto ended.”

Grant’s ability to compose music appropriate to specific levels of experience has found him working with groups ranging from professional orchestras, choruses, new music ensembles and ballet companies to community choruses and youth orchestras. His music is regularly programmed at music festivals, symposia, and clinics, and his Tribute for orchestra was a featured work at the 2002 Midwest Conductor's Clinic in Chicago, performed by the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra.

Recent orchestral commissions have included Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, for virtuoso saxophonist David Stambler; and Eja! Eja! for timpani, soprano solo, large chorus and orchestra for the Choral Arts Society of Washington's 2005 Kennedy Center Holiday Concert.  Current commissions include a centennial celebration work for orchestra for the University of Mary Washington; a work for narrator and orchestra for the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra based on Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird; and Concerto for Chamber Orchestra, also for Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra.

Upcoming performances include his Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Strings at the 2007 ClarinetFest in Vancouver sponsored by the International Clarinet Association; Waltz for Betz for solo viola and string orchestra in Paris, France; and a newly commissioned work for tuba ensemble at the 2008 International Tuba-Euphonium Conference in Cincinnati.

Recently, works by James Grant have been recorded and released in separate projects by clarinetist William Helmers, tubist Mark Nelson, and by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in Australia.  In late summer 2007, feature articles on Grant’s recital music will appear both in TUBA Journal and in the Journal of the American Viola Society.

James Grant recently moved from the United States to Toronto, Ontario, where he lives with his wife, fine-art photographer Elizabeth Siegfried.