James Baker – Past Concerts

James Baker is principal percussionist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra. He is music director and conductor of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and director of the Percussion Ensemble at the Mannes College of Music. Mr. Baker was the conductor of the New York New Music Ensemble and is conductor of the Talea Ensemble.

As instrumentalist or conductor, he has premiered music by many of the great composers of the 20th and 21st centuries including Boulez, Cage, Carter, Messiaen, Dillon, Harvey, Wourinen, Davidovsky, Glass, Aperghis, Reynolds, Henze, Crumb, Babbitt, Neuwirth, Furrer, and many, many others, often working closely with the composers.

Through his work with his groups at conferences, universities, and festivals, he is an advocate for the music of a whole new generation of composers from around the world, premiering hundreds of new works. Mr. Baker was a conductor of Broadway shows for many years, conducting "The King and I," "The Sound of Music," "The Music Man," "Oklahoma," "An Inspector Calls," and "La Boheme," among others.

An active composer of electro-acoustic music, Mr. Baker won a Bessie award for composition for dance. He has written extensively for the theater and for various ensembles with electronics and has written a number of pieces for longtime collaborator/choreographer Tere O'Connor. Recent commissions include the Opera Ballet de Lyon, BAM Next Wave, The Dublin Dance Festival, and the Abbey Theater in Dublin.

As a percussionist he appears often with Orpheus, was a member of the American Composers Orchestra and the Eos Orchestra, and has played with the New York Philharmonic, the Paris Opera Orchestra, and the Royal Danish and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras, among others.