James Ross
About
James Ross is a Boston-born improviser, a horn-blower, a questioner of concert rituals, a man who likes to move, and a firm believer in the shaping impact of classical music on the lives of those it touches. He is considered one of the finest conducting pedagogues in the country. He is presently Director of Orchestral Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music. He has taught conducting at the Juilliard School since 2011 and has led Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA as orchestra director since 2013. He served as professor and director of orchestral activities at the University of Maryland from 2001 to 2017 and has been music director of the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra since 2018.
Mr. Ross is internationally recognized for his work advancing the future of orchestras through cross-genre collaborations especially with choreographer and MacArthur Fellow Liz Lerman, polymath designer-director Doug Fitch, and video artist Tim McLoraine. He played principal horn of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1981 to 1984 and was a prize winner at the Bavarian Radio Horn Competition in 1978 at age 19.
He was artistic director of the National Orchestral Institute (NOI) at the University of Maryland from 2002 to 2012 where his leadership helped served as an impetus for creative change in the orchestral landscape of our country. Mr. Ross has also led inaugural courses of the Cuban American Youth Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s RCO Young. He has served on the music faculty of Yale University and Haverford and Bryn Mawr colleges.
Mr. Ross’s principal conducting teachers were Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa, Otto-Werner Mueller, and Leonard Bernstein with whom he studied at Tanglewood. He holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a Master’s Certificate from the Berlin Academy of the Arts. He has spent five summers at Tanglewood – as a horn player in the Boston University Tanglewood Institute from 1975-77, and as a conductor at the TMC (Seminar 1984 and Fellow 1985).
Mr. Ross loves art that is new no matter when created. He loves concerts that tell a compelling inner story. And he loves helping both conductors and orchestras find their own authentic communal voices.