About
Composer / Dramatist
Education
Columbia University, Bachelor's of Arts:
Music Composition & Computer Science
Notable Performance Venues
The DiMenna Center (Manhattan, New York City)
National Sawdust (Brooklyn, New York City)
Cankarjev Dom (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Hidden Valley: Institute of the Arts (Carmel Valley, California)
Chiesa di San Giuseppe (Alba, Italy)
Lorimer Chapel (Waterville, Maine)
Trinity Episcopal Church (Seattle, Washington)
Musical Theatre Directing Roles
In the Heights (Music Director, Columbia Musical Theatre Society)
Fun Home (Asst. Music Director, Barnard-Columbia Theatre Department)
Fame (Asst. Music Director, CMTS)
The Varsity Show (Asst. Rehearsal Pianist)
Honors
2022, Music Broadcast on Performance Today to National US Radio
2022 TEMPO Ensemble Call for Scores Winner
2021 New Musicals Inc. Award for New Musical Theatre Work
2020 Commission from Peter Frajola, Oregon Symphony Concertmaster
2019 Robert Scandrett Opus 7 Award for Best Choral Composition
A genre-blending composer-dramatist based in Manhattan, James Pecore has no clue what he's doing. But he loves telling stories with music, and the magical vulnerability stories can create between us.
Pecore loves to use musical theatre and chamber music in particular to blend various genres, stories, and traditions into one coherent work. To this end, he loves all music: Kendrick Lamar and Whitney Houston; Stephen Sondheim and Dai Fujikura; Stevie Wonder and Lin-Manuel Miranda; the list goes on.
A composer at Columbia University, James Pecore has studied Music Composition principally with Georg Friedrich Haas, with Peter Susser, and with other amazing souls. Pecore has also studied musical theatre with Lisa Rothe and Anna Jacobs, playwriting with Andy Bragen, and literary analysis with Erik Gray.
A sought after composer, lecturer, and music director, Pecore has been an active member of the musical communities of New York, as well as appearing as a guest in such locations as California, Ljubljana, Berlin, Paris, Reykjavík, Athens, and more.
Fractured yet tactfully arranged together, James Pecore composes music as a mosaic—beauty coalescing out of brokenness—purpose, out of pain.
Mentors
Mr. Domenic Salerni (Violinist, the GRAMMY-Winning Attacca Quartet)
Ms. Anna Jacobs (Musical Theatre Songwriter, NYU & NYYS)
Mr. Georg Friedrich Haas (Columbia University, Composition Faculty)
Mr. Peter Susser (Columbia University, Theory Faculty)
Mr. Nick DiBerardino (Curtis Institute of Music, Faculty)
Dr. Ira Taxin (The Juilliard School, DMA and Faculty)
Dr. Jordan Kuspa (Yale School of Music, DMA)
Dr. Wang Jie (New York University, DMA)
Internships
The GRAMMY-Winning Attacca Quartet (SONY)
The Windmill Factory (Brooklyn, NYC)
Collaborators
Violinist Cindy Wu (2022 Emerging Composer's Intensive)
The Aizuri Quartet (NYYS 2021-2022)
Institût .abeceda (2022 Composer in Residence)
The New York Youth Symphony (2020-2022 Composer Fellow)
The Estrella Consort (Alba Music Festival 2022)
Broadway Actors Heath Saunders and Roe Hartrampf (NYYS 2021)
Violinist Grace Huh & Cellist Soomin Kim (Columbia-Juilliard, Spring 2022)
Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble (Fall 2021)
Hub New Music (Summer 2021)
Beo String Quartet (Summer 2021)
Violinist Peter Frajola (Oregon Symphony Concertmaster)
etc...
