James Maxwell is a composer of concert music and music for contemporary dance, theatre, film, and media, and is Artistic Co-Director of Restless Productions. His music has been presented by leading organizations including Aventa Ensemble, Continuum New Music, Fight With a Stick Performance, Music on Main, Redshift Music, Standing Wave, Turning Point Ensemble, Vancouver Pro Musica, Vancouver New Music, and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

 

He has worked collaboratively with choreographers Claire French, Rachel Meyer, Joe Laughlin, Simone Orlando, and Helen Walkley, theatre artists Mallory Catlett, Alex Ferguson, and Caleb Johnson, filmmakers Alex Williams and Alison Beda, and visual artists Kathleen Ritter and Hadley+Maxwell. Recent works include Many Worlds and Magicicada, by choreographer Rachel Meyer, Migration and the series The Refrain: Getting in Sync with the World, for Fight With a Stick performance, The Razor Hiss of a Whisper, for Turning Point Ensemble and Couloir, and Finding itself [it] deviates, for Standing Wave.

​

Upcoming Upcoming and in-progress works include a new score for Helen Walkley, a new commission for Tempest Flute Ensemble, a new film score for Fight With a Stick Performance, and a new interdisciplinary performance project with Restless Productions and Rachel Meyer. When not organizing sounds James hits things as the drummer of post-/avant-rock quartet Square.

​

James is also an active researcher, developer, and entrepreneur in the field of computer applications for interactive music composition. His doctoral work explored the design and development of computer-assisted composition tools, with a focus on using intelligent, adaptive systems as compositional “collaborators.” In 2016 he co-founded Spliqs Intelligent Media Inc., a startup focused on the development of interactive tools for music creation and collaboration.