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.
Upcoming and in-progress works include new collaborations with Fight With a Stick Performance and Helen Walkley, a new work for Tempest Flute Choir, and a new interdisciplinary performance project with Restless Productions.
In 2016 he co-founded Spligs Intelligent Media Inc, a startup focused on the development of interactive tools for music creation and collaboration. Today his tech focus is on interactive creativity and low-data, ethical AI training, with a focus on methods that can be steered off the data manifold for deeper creative exploration.
News
Finishing up “Trans: Experiments in Living”
Together with animator Jay White and writer/director Alex Lazaridis I'm in the final stages of edits and tweaks on a new film project called "Trans: Experiments in Living". It's a curious, funny, and moving experimental film-performance work exploring the notion of transition on global and in some sense panpsychic level. It should be up within the next few weeks so I'll share a link here when it arrives.
Back in the studio for Magicicada
I'm super excited to be back in the studio with Rachel Meyer to develop a full-length version of her work Magicicada, first performed at the EDAM Choreographic Series in December, 2024. We're expanding it out to a full-length piece, and I'm thrilled to be working with pianist Miranda Wong as I expand the material to integrate live performance. We're just getting underway with the extensions now, but things are going well and we have some engaging new material to present. Keep your eyes open for the premiere as part of the 2027 Dancing on the Edge festival.