James Mosher has thrilled audiences throughout the United States, Europe and South America with his horn playing. Equally acknowledged for his excellence as a horn instructor, Mr. Mosher, having taught at NEC since 2006, is the senior horn instructor in the Preparatory School. In addition, he teaches chamber music, including the Honors Brass Quintet. In the administrative side, Mr. Mosher is the Chair of Brass and Winds in the School of Continuing Education at NEC.
Jim founded his private teaching studio, French Horn Studio Boston, in 1999. His approach has yielded unparalleled results with his private students, both at NEC and at French Horn Studio, holding top positions in youth orchestras and wind ensembles throughout the greater Boston area. A great number of his past and present high school and middle school students have won highest honors at the Massachusetts Junior and Senior District Music Festivals. Many of his horn pupils been selected to perform as Principal Horn, in the Massachusetts All-State Festivals, as well as the All-Eastern USA Orchestra, and the National Youth Orchestra of the USA, sponsored by the Carnegie Hall Foundation in New York. His graduating high school students have gone on to excel at colleges including Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale University, his alma mater.
In the summers, Jim performers and teaches in Germany at the Saarburg International Chamber Music Festival, saarburgfestival.de. He has appeared as performer at the Killington Music Festival as well as the Aspen Music Festival, Monadnock Festival, Indianapolis Early Music Festival, and Music On The Hill.
Acclaimed for his artistry and musical expression across the range of classical and modern genres, Jim is equally at home performing baroque music on natural horn to post-modern jazz on the valve horn. As a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician, Jim performs and records widely, and has appeared with virtually all of the leading ensembles in New England, including the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops, Boston Lyric Opera and Boston Ballet Orchestra. He also performs on historical natural horns with Boston Baroque, Handel & Haydn Society, Grande Harmonie, and Musicians of The Old Post Road, with whom he has made notable CD recordings. He has participated in musical tours in many regions of the USA, has been Solo Horn with the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil, the Sarasota Opera Orchestra and the Key West Symphony in Florida. He has performed with professional orchestras in Aachen and Darmstadt, Germany, in Graz, Austria as well as Montreux and Geneva, Switzerland.
As a concerto soloist, Jim has appeared on numerous occasions at Boston’s famous Hatch Shell on the Boston Esplanade, on Cape Cod, and Boston’s historic North Shore, as well as in his adopted home town of Newton, Massachusetts. Well-known in Boston for his jazz performances, he has recorded a great number of albums with the Jazz Composers Alliance (JCA) Orchestra of Boston. A sought-after chamber musician, he is founder and director of The Brass Consortium, a quintet of top-tier professional brass musicians in the Boston area. He also founded and the NEC Horn Trio, with Liana Zaretsky, violin and Andrew Goodridge, pianist, all fellow faculty members at NEC.
Jim graduated from high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, earned the Bachelor of Music Education degree from Boston University, Master of Music from Yale University, Doctoral Studies in Music at Boston University, as well as the Certificat d’Etudes from L’Institut de Hautes Etudes Musicales, in Switzerland. In his spare time, he enjoys snowshoeing and cross-country skiing, as well as long-distance swimming and hiking with his beloved rescue dog, Tucker.
