Recent Premier
Youngstown, Ohio
The Garden Had Fallen Still for chamber orchestra
Sunday May 2, 2021, 3:00 pm
Ford Family Recital Hall, DeYor Performing Arts Center, Youngstown, Ohio
The Dana Ensemble
The Garden Had Fallen Still for chamber orchestra
Sunday May 2, 2021, 3:00 pm
Ford Family Recital Hall, DeYor Performing Arts Center, Youngstown, Ohio
The Dana Ensemble
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New Sounds
Mbira: a Lamellophone from Southern Africa
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During one of my many trips back to my native South Africa, I picked up one of these beautiful instruments. They are easily available at craft markets, tourist shops, or just sold by the side of the road. Part of the Venda and Shona traditions, this type of instrument is also found further North, where it may be known as a Kalimba or Sansa.
The tuning of each member of this family is unique. For my mbira, the lowest notes are in the middle, the highest on the left and right, with different pentatonic scales in each of these two registers. Read more and hear this instrument on my blog |
WATCH: Composing and Creativity
James Wilding talks about his composition process on the January video of Urban Troubadour's Online Roving Adventures
Watch on Urban Troubadour
Coming Soon
Akron, Ohio
Two Pieces for orchestra written for Akron Youth Symphony. Premier TBA
Two Pieces for orchestra written for Akron Youth Symphony. Premier TBA
Peruse the score
New Videos
New Album PICTURES Reviewed in clevelandclassical.com
"In Pictures, the debut album from composer and pianist James Wilding, every piece was inspired by something outside the world of music, from the concrete (a particular sculpture) to the abstract (a vision of the end of the world)... perhaps the biggest draw of listening to Pictures is the unique glimpse it gives into one artist’s process of composition" - Jarrett Hoffman
Album Launch
Impressions from the album launch at Steinway Piano Galley on 4 April 2019
Photography by Missy Iler
Recording the Album
Video from the studio in Mount Vernon, New York
Drops of Memory occur predictably, while the harmony changes gradually and unpredictably, forming a texture of individual notes dancing over a canvas of ever expanding and contracting harmonic progressions.
Inspired by a Zimbabwean stone sculpture of a maternal spirit, Nehanda Remembered uses quartal chords to represent the solid stone and the nurturing mother.
Preparing for the Project
The composer talks about the process of practicing his own music
Kaupo Kikkas Photography
Album cover artwork chosen from this gallery of shots by award-winning Estonian photographer Kaupo Kikkas
