Simon James
Australian violinist, Simon James, Professor of Violin at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, is in demand as a guest teacher throughout the US and Canada and in the UK, Australia, Singapore, China, and Australia. In the summer he can be found teaching at Center Stage Strings, the Cambridge and Liberec International String Academies, Encore Chamber Music Festival, and the Brian Lewis Young Artists Program.
Since Mr James has headed the Coleman Studio his students have won the Menuhin, Stradivarius, Stulberg, Vancouver International, MTNA National, and were laureates at Spohr, Kochian, Johansen, Grumiaux, and Postacchini Competitions. Often featured on NPR’s “From the Top” they have received scholarships from the Jack Kent Cooke and Dorothy Richard Starling Foundations. They have performed concerti with the Detroit, Calgary, and Seattle Symphonies, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Liszt Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Koncerthaus Orchestre, and London Philharmonia among many others. Their festival performances include Aspen, Kronberg, Morningside Music Bridge, Heifetz Institute, Perlman Music Program, Juilliard Starling-Delay Violin Symposium, and New York String Orchestra Seminar. His students regularly continue their studies at Curtis, Colburn, Juilliard, NEC, Royal Academy, and the San Francisco Conservatory among others. Former students have been awarded a Davidson Fellowship and an Avery Fischer Career Grant and have gone on to win positions in the New York Philharmonic, St Louis Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
A thirty-year veteran of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and a founding member of the Australian World Orchestra, Mr. James has been a member of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Orchestra and performed at the music festivals of Tanglewood, Ravinia, Grand Teton, St. Barths, and Classical Tahoe. As concertmaster of the Northwest Sinfonia, Mr. James can be heard on hundreds of motion-picture sound tracks and he has performed live with Pearl Jam, Elton John, Billy Joel, A R Rahman and many others.