James D'Angelo biography
James D'Angelo has had a multi-faceted career as a composer, pianist, organist, lecturer, writer, educator and workshop leader first in the USA and now England. Before embarking on a teaching career, he played jazz piano and wrote jazz compositions/arrangements. In this he was influenced by his teachers John Lewis (leader of the Modern Jazz Quartet), Bill Russo (composer for the Stan Kenton Orchestra), George Russell and Gunther Schuller. His concert debut at Carnegie Recital Hall (reviewed by the New York Times) consisted of highly structured keyboard improvisations, an extension of his performances as a jazz musician. Subsequently he formed the Phrygian Jazz Quartet as a vehicle for his many 'third stream' songs, some of which will be presented for the first time in the UK in the Festival. These songs were written especially for the American jazz singer Jay Clayton who recorded four of them for Savoy Records.
During his tenure as a music lecturer within the City University of New York, he received a doctorate for research into the esoteric Hindemith, a composer who has influenced his writing and studied with the Polish piano virtuoso Jan Gorbaty and the visionary French composer Jean Catoire. In 1984 he settled in London with his British wife and children and eventually joined the music faculty of Goldsmiths College. Following a long dry period, he resumed his music writing in 1985, using the study of Indian music as a catalyst for change in his style. The result was a continuing series of chamber and choral works and more songs (over 40 at last count) characterized by a simplicity of expression within a pantonal idiom. Several large works were conceived for piano and keyboard synthesizer performed by the composer in an improvisatory style. These include the Raga Mala Suites, The Four Temperaments, The Three Gunas, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Way of the Spiritual Warrior, The Elements and The Great Happiness, the latter three recorded on the composer's own label. His published works include the Toccata for Solo Percussionist and the chamber work Fool and Angel Entering a City. Other works have had performances in Helsinki, Milan and on BBC Television.
In 1996 he presented a rare performance of the complete song cycle of Das Marienleben by Hindemith at St James's Piccadilly, a programme that included a cycle of his own songs. He was previously a featured composer at the 1997 Planet Tree Music Festival and reviewed by the Independent newspaper. Over the last three years he has been commissioned to compose works by the Ealing Abbey Choir, American Boyschoir and the Malden Young Strings. Virgin Classics have recorded his Portraits of Krishna, released in 1999, as part of an album of American composers including Copland, Bernstein and Rorem.
His essays have appeared in the New International Dictionary of Opera, Contemporary Music Review, the Hindemith Jahrbuch and the journal Caduceus (he is a member of its editorial board). Since 1992 he has been the principal organist at the St Thomas the Apostle Church, west London. He will be taking part in the Ealing Arts Organ Festival set for the Spring of 2001. An authority on the therapeutic application of sound, he has established voice and movement workshops as a pathway to inner harmony. Through this work he has received invitations to speak at major conferences, the latest to be held at the well-known Findhorn Foundation He was commissioned by Harper Collins to write a book on the subject entitled Healing with the Voice: Creating Harmony through the Power of Sound. It will be published in September 2000.