| For the next twenty years he pursued a triple career as composer,
conductor and solo percussionist. After four years as conductor of Schola Cantorum of Oxford (1977-81) he founded the New London
Chamber Choir (1981), which was soon to become celebrated throughout Europe for its ground-breaking performances and recordings
of contemporary music, and which he directed for 26 years until leaving England and settling in Germany in 2007. During this period
he was also professor of percussion at Darmstadt (1982 - 1994), founder and director of the Centre for Microtonal Music in London
and it's ensemble, Critical Band (1990-1994), whilst remaining prolific as a composer.
Since the mid-1990s he has focussed more on
composition and conducting, working with ensembles such as musikFabrik, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble InterContemporain and Champ
d'Action. As a choral conductor he works regularly with most of Europe's leading chamber choirs, such as RIAS Kammerchor, Netherlands
Chamber Choir, Cappella Amsterdam, Latvian Radio Choir, Helsinki Chamber Choir, Collegium Vocale Gent and Vocalconsort Berlin, in
repertoire from 15th Century to the present day. He has worked closely with composers such as Kurtág, Xenakis, Ligeti, Kagel,
Harvey, Stockhausen and Reich, and in 2002 he prepared and conducted the Netherlands Radio Choir in the world premiere of Stockhausen's
Engel-Prozessionen at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. He went on to direct the same work in the context of Cologne Opera's 2011 production
of the complete Sonntag aus Licht with the Estonian Philharmonic Choir and Cappella Amsterdam.
As a composer he has written for
almost every conceivable genre, and is especially known for his percussion music, his designing and building of new instruments,
and for his work with electronics. He has twice been commissioned by the Proms in London, first in 1989 for his orchestral work
Oreion, later in 1995 for his Two men meet, each presuming the other to be from a distant planet. His first opera, Hildegard
was performed with huge success throughout Great Britain, Holland and Belgium in 2005-6, and in 2013 he completed his second opera,
a chamber opera based on Gullivers Travels, commissioned by the dutch ensemble Insomnio, to a libretto by Paul Griffiths. 2015 saw
the highly successful world premiere of his Lamentations by Vocalconsort Berlin, and this work was repeated at the Semana de Musica
Religiosa Cuenca in March 2016. His setting of poems of Rumi - Khamush, for mixed chorus, percussion quartet and piano -
was premiered by RIAS Kammerchor Berlin and Amadinda Percussion Group in the Berlin Philharmonie in 2017, and their subsequent recording of
it was released on Sargasso in May 2022. Two further Sargasso releases followed in 2024 (Kalavinka) and 2025 (Jōdo).
In 2024 he was invited by the Dutch Ensemble Insomnio to compose a work for four cathedral organs
to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Storm of Utrecht (1674) which famously destroyed the nave of the Utrecht Domkerk.
This project was made possible by Insomnio's ground-breaking research programme
TouchLabTERMINAL, which enable musicians in remote locations to
perform together via the internet and with almost zero latency. Using TouchLab's own mini-computers and interfaces the organs of Epiphanienkirche Berlin,
Antoniuskirche Düsseldorf and Blackburn Cathedral were able to join the organ of the Utrecht Domkerk in a live performance of Tempestas in memoriam on 1 August 2024.
This idea has been developed further in a new work, Solstice, for six soloists and large ensemble, due to be premiered in November 2026.
Since the summer of 2024 James Wood has also resumed his former career as an organist, regularly playing both recitals and services in the Marienkirche, Dahme/Mark.
At Christmas 2025 he performed Messiaen's complete organ cycle La Nativité du Seigneur on the Cavaillé-Coll style organ in the
Pauluskirche Berlin-Zehlendorf, and in August 2026 he will return there to play the Messe from the Livre d'Orgue of Nicolas de Grigny. Further recitals are planned there in 2026 and 2027.
As musicologist, his completion of
Gesualdo's Sacrae Cantiones Liber secundus - a project which took three years to complete - and his subsequent recording of
the complete collection with Vocalconsort Berlin for Harmonia Mundi (released February 2013) has been universally hailed as
a sensation, and 'one of the most astounding reconstructions of our time' (Die Zeit*), and recently won him the prestigious
ECHO-Klassik Prize in the category "Choir recording of the year". It brings to life no less than one third of Gesualdo's
sacred music, which has lain unperformable for the last 400 years.
His recent book about the earliest music theories of Ancient Greece and India and their growing influence
on the music of the last 150 years - Tapping the Source - was published in April 2022 by Vision
Edition and has met with considerable critical acclaim.
Since October 2025 he has been Guest Professor for Composition at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik in Berlin.
Awards include the Lili Boulanger Memorial Award (1979), Gemini Fellowship (1993), Arts Foundation Fellowship for
electro-acoustic composition (1996) and the Holst Foundation Fellowship (1996).
*...eine der erstaunlichsten Rekonstruktionen unserer Tage, die spektakulärste von drei neuen
Gesualdo-CDs" DIE ZEIT, 7.3.13
|
