James Buswell
Violinist, conductor, recording artist, and educator, James Buswell has always chosen to cultivate the art of music while playing many roles. As a violin virtuoso, he first burst on to the New York music scene as the youngest ever soloist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of seven. His mature solo career commenced in 1963 and has included performances of more than one hundred violin concerti on five continents with major orchestras.
The art of expressive recital playing has been central to Buswell’s solo career as he is passionate about communicating in one performance the diverse languages of four centuries of violin music. His love for ensemble playing has led to a dynamic career of performing both violin and viola in chamber music repertoire. He played in the gala opening week of concerts at Alice Tully Hall in New York's Lincoln Center. Later, he became a regular artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for more than a decade.
As a conductor, Buswell was blessed to have collaborated as a violin soloist with many of the greatest conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, George Szell, William Steinberg, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Andre Previn, Pierre Boulez, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Though the influences of these luminaries are palpable in his music, Buswell nevertheless crafts a unique leadership role whenever he is on stage. It is not unusual to see him lead a conductor-less orchestra from the soloist or the concertmaster position and exchange the violin for a baton to conduct a full-scale symphonic or operatic work at the same event. The seamless transition from instrument to baton is often a marvel to the audience.
A Grammy nominated artist, James Buswell made his debut recording with the London Symphony Orchestra playing the Vaughan Williams Concerto. His CD of the Barber Violin Concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy in 2002. Since 2015, Buswell has released 3 CDs on Naxos: two discs of 20th century concerti by Turkish composer Ulvi Cemal Erkin and American composer Walter Saul, and a chamber music disc, where he performed as a guest violist on Carpe Diem String Quartet’s recording of Taneyev’s Viola Quintet. Other solo and chamber music recordings that have won critical acclaim include the Six Solo Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach on Centaur Records, Bach’s Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord on Vanguard Records, and Walter Piston’s Violin Concerti and Chamber Music on Naxos.
In celebration of the 300th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s birth, James Buswell was invited to perform and serve as the principal tour guide and narrator in a film portraying Bach's life and culture. "The Stations of Bach" was premiered at a special event in Washington D.C. paying tribute to the re-unification of Germany, and then broadcast extensively over PBS.
As a young performer, Buswell was asked to add teaching duties to his already full schedule. His primary teachers were Mary Canberg, Paul Stassevich, and Ivan Galamian, from whom he gained insights to the legendary disciplines of the Russian School and the modern techniques of the Franco-Belgian tradition. Always pursuing the best practice in violin pedagogy, Buswell honed his educational skills at the University of Arizona, and later at Indiana University. While in Bloomington, he founded the Chamber Orchestra of the School of Music, and conducted a great variety of repertoire including ballet and opera. In 1987, he accepted a post at the New England Conservatory of Music where he taught for more than a quarter of a century. As of 2018, both Mr. Buswell and his wife, cellist Carol Ou have joined the faculty of the Steinhardt School at New York University.
The distinctive priorities of his pedagogy have made him very much in demand as a clinician and master class presenter. Towards this end, he is also in the process of compiling a large library of editions, which include only a portion of the huge repertoire that he has been fortunate enough to perform numerous times. He also continues to serve on countless juries of international string competitions.
The alumni of the Buswell studio are remarkable for their diversity. Several have become distinguished in the performance of contemporary music, whereas others have made a career in Baroque performance and country fiddling. Many populate the finest orchestras of the world, some as instrumentalists and others as conductors. Buswell regularly visits the studios of his alumni, where he is privileged to be able to guide the grandchildren of his pedagogy.
Boston has been the home for James Buswell through more than half of his life, even since he became enchanted with its intellectual environment as a freshman at Harvard. He now lives there with his wife and children, Anna and William.