Aaron James

Biography

Aaron James is the Director of Music at the Toronto Oratory of St Philip Neri, and a Sessional Lecturer in organ at the University of Toronto. At the Oratory, Aaron plays organ at Holy Family Parish and directs three choirs for Masses and Vespers on Sundays and feast days, as well as teaching music to students at St Philip’s Seminary. An alumnus of the Eastman School of Music, he holds both a PhD degree in musicology and a DMA degree in organ, along with the Performer’s Certificate in organ. He was the 2011 winner of the National Organ Playing Competition of the Royal Canadian College of Organists, and has won numerous other prizes for his organ playing, including first prizes in the Florence and Stanley Osborne Organ Competition and the Howard Fairclough Organ Competition; he was also a finalist in the 2012 Franz Schmidt International Organ Competition (Kitzbühel, Austria). Aaron is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian College of Organists, the College’s highest academic distinction, receiving the Willan and Porter prizes for the 2012 Fellowship examinations.

Aaron performs regularly as an organ recitalist and collaborative musician, with recent appearances at the Toronto Bach Festival, the Pacific Baroque Festival, at festivals of the RCCO and the Organ Historical Society, at the Sacred Music Colloquium hosted by the Church Music Association of America, and as a soloist with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Aaron also performs as part of Duo Regale with violinist Corey Gemmell, exploring the repertoire of music for violin and organ with a particular focus on 20th and 21st-century music. During the 2024-25 season, Aaron is performing the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach in a series of sixteen recitals on the newly refurbished organ of Holy Family Church, Toronto. (Gabriel Kney 1980/Hal Gober 2000).

Aaron completed his doctoral studies as an organist in the studio of Edoardo Bellotti, having previously studied with Hans Davidsson and Michel Bouvard at Eastman, and with Paul Merritt at the University of Western Ontario. His musicological research has focused on Renaissance vocal polyphony, with numerous articles for scholarly audiences as well as a general readership in publications such as Journal of the Alamire Foundation, Early Music, Sacred Music, Organ Canada, The Lamp, Oxford Bibliographies Online and Grove Music Online. Aaron is the editor of the Parish Book of Motets (Church Music Association of America, 2022), a printed collection with accompanying online scores and practice recordings designed to introduce sacred polyphony to small parish choirs. A second volume of the Parish Book of Motets, with repertoire for three-voice mixed choir, is now in preparation with planned publication in late 2025.

At the University of Toronto, he teaches studio organ lessons and classes in organ literature for students in the Faculty of Music, having previously taught at Eastman and at the University of Rochester. He is also a past president of RCCO Toronto Centre and has served since 2019 as national Chair of Examinations for the College.