James Bagwell, music director of The Dessoff Choirs, maintains an active schedule throughout the United States as a conductor of choral, operatic, and orchestral works. He was appointed Dessoff’s seventh music director in 2005, and since then has led the choir in music ranging from 17th-century Venetian masterworks to 21st-century American premieres.
He is the director of Bard College’s music program, where he is spearheading the launch of a graduate program in choral conducting through the Bard Conservatory of Music. In the summer of 2009, he returned to the Bard SummerScape Festival as chorus master for Meyerbeer’s opera Les Hugenots, and served as director of choruses for the Bard Music Festival since 2004. He also prepared the Concert Chorale of New York, which he directs, for an appearance at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival.
Since 1997 Maestro Bagwell has been music director of the May Festival Youth Chorus in Cincinnati and music director of Light Opera Oklahoma. He has prepared choruses for performances with ensembles such as the New York, Los Angeles, St. Petersburg, and Czech Philharmonic orchestras, and the Cincinnati, American, San Francisco, Indianapolis, and NHK symphony orchestras. He has worked with noted conductors, including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Leon Botstein, James Conlon, Leon Fleischer, Erich Kunzel, Louis Langrée, Raymond Leppard, Jesús López-Cobos, Lorin Maazel, Christof Perick, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Shaw, Yuri Temirkanov, and Michael Tilson Thomas. His recent conducting engagements include concerts with the Jerusalem and Tulsa symphony orchestras. In 2009 he was appointed music director of The Collegiate Chorale and principal guest conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra.