James studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was organ scholar, and then became Assistant Chorus Master/music staff at ENO.  For Glyndebourne he has conducted The Bartered Bride (GTO) and Zoe (Glyndebourne/C4), for Gubbay Cav and Pag with the RPO (RAH) and for ETO Don Giovanni.  Concert engagements include the RPO, BBC Concert and London Concert Orchestras at home and the City of Prague Philharmonic and the Flanders Symphony Orchestras abroad.  He is a regular guest conductor of the BBC Singers, with numerous broadcasts, recordings and concerts at the RFH, Wigmore Hall and at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; he has just completed two CDs with them (Judith Bingham and Alexander Levine).

His ensemble, the Arcadians, is much in demand in the world of commercial music, recording for Universal, Sony and BMG.  As one half of the composing duo, Morgan Pochin, he writes a wide range of music, from the music for the EMMY/BAFTA winning Kumars at No.42 to the large-scale choral commission Kubla Khan (Brighton Festival – Philharmonia/BFC/Paul Daniel). As record producers, composers and arrangers, Morgan Pochin have worked with artists as diverse as Julian Lloyd Webber and Elton John and they wrote, arranged and produced Katherine Jenkins’ No.1 album Premiere.