James Dorsa

Background

About James Dorsa

James Dorsa is a native of Southern California's San Fernando Valley as well as a California State University, Northridge alumnus. He performs harpsichord concerts both locally and abroad, strongly favoring the rarely performed modern repertoire. He is known for his composition "Jupiter's Moons," which enjoyed the first place award at the 2008 Aliénor Com position Competition and was selected for the semi-final round at the 2012 Jurow Harpsichord Competition. His various compositions enjoy performances worldwide from numerous harpsichordists and have received the highest marks from musical critics. All of his compositions feature idiomatic writing for the harpsichord in a very "maximalist" setting. As a performer he is second to none, maintaining complete and overwhelming control of any audience he chooses. He is a regular performer at the Aliénor Competition and frequently represents modern composers during the Boston Early Music festival Fringe concerts. James Dorsa is the founding member of the early music group LocoSonore, which will be performing Archangelo Corelli’s Op. 5 in the fall of 2015. He also founded the Cyan Ensemble performing contemporary repertoire. James Dorsa is also a rock keyboardist having grown up in Hollywood during the 1980s age of the synthesizer. From 1987 until 1992 he performed with groups representing a vast assortment of musical styles at some of the biggest Hollywood venues at the time. Although he has long since scaled down his rig considerably he still performs regularly as a freelance keyboardist. Dr. Dorsa is recording Bach’s Clavier Ubüng I in January of 2016 and will be performing this collection on tour that year. He joined the faculty at California State University Northridge in 2008 where he serves within the keyboard department as the harpsichord instructor.