James W. Doyle is a percussionist, teaching artist, multidisciplinary collaborator, and arts administrator based in the Pacific Northwest. He performs as a chamber musician, soloist, improviser, and orchestral percussionist throughout the United States and Japan, and is an ardent observer of moving water. This latter detail can be understood through his ongoing series of single-shot videos/compositions titled Confluence.
As a chamber musician, James is a member of Striking Music, a Seattle-based percussion and media collective exploring light, sound, and design, and the Doyle-Kane flute and percussion duo with Tracy Kane Doyle. He tours and records with Apricity Trio, a U.S./Japan-based percussion, clarinet, and flute trio collaborating with sculptor Koshi Hayashi and composer Ippo Tsuboi, and recently performed at the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival with violinist Maria Sampen, and the Chicago-based collaborative music ensemble, Beyond This Point.
James frequently performs with Symphony Tacoma, Northwest Sinfonietta, Tacoma Opera, Vashon Opera, Auburn Symphony Orchestra, Yakima Symphony Orchestra, Federal Way Symphony, Bellevue Symphony, and the Lake Washington Symphony Orchestra. He’s recorded over 40 albums with Austin, Nashville, and southwest-based americana, country, pop, and rock artists, and performs on concertina and bodhran in Irish traditional music settings. Prior to relocating to the PNW, he performed extensively throughout the Rocky Mountain region, Las Vegas, NV, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Creating a sense of place for collaboration is at the foundation of James’s work. His project, Miscellany Music, curates solo and chamber concerts that are place-based, percussion-forward, and integrated with moving image, food and beverage, light/sound design, visual/physical arts, poetry/spoken word, nature, and/or movement. Recent collaborations include concert pairings with visual artists Susan Russell Hall and Terry Rishel, an immersive 360-degree video installation with visual artist Angelina Villalobos Soto, and he recorded for and appeared in the film, ten of us, by Foster’s Creative.
James is the community engagement manager and a teaching artist for the Tacoma Youth Symphony Association, where he produces festivals, community connections events, and directs TYSAmba, a community samba bateria for Tacoma-area students. He teaches musicology courses at the University of Puget Sound and is a frequent artist-in-residence at Gunma University in Japan. He’s on the applied faculties at Saint Martin’s University, the University of Puget Sound Community Music School, and South Puget Sound Community College. Past appointments include serving on the full-time faculties at Adams State University and Saint Martin’s University, and as artist-in-residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Western Colorado University, the Australia National Drum and Percussion Festival, and the Ted Atkatz Percussion Seminar.
Early in his career, James toured the United States as the principal percussionist of the United States Air Force Band of the Golden West, and toured throughout the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and Africa on deployment as a drum set player with the Air National Guard Band of the Southwest’s rock band. He’s a Marimba One, Vic Firth, Beetle Percussion, and Black Swamp endorser, artist, and educator, and earned a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.