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JAMES DEMSTER (Conductor and Music Director) JAMES DEMSTER, Conductor & Music Director. In November of 2004, the Mexican Union of Music and Theater Critics awarded James Demster their diploma for outstanding achievement as Artistic Director of the Madrigal Choir of Bellas Artes. Recently he has performed as Director of the Domingo-Embil Zarzuela Company of Mexico in such venues as the National Auditorium, where he has also conducted a series of concerts with the Spanish pop-star, Miguel Bosé. During his nearly thirty years of residence in Mexico, he has held many artistic positions, such as vocal coach for the National Opera Company of Bellas Artes, conductor of the National Opera Company chorus, director of the chamber choir Solistas Ensamble and professor of the Superior School of Music of Bellas Artes. At the University of Central Florida in Orlando, he completed a double major summa cum laude in oboe and piano performance and then received the Master of Music degree from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in piano performance. His conducting teacher at Tanglewood was the renowned professor Gustav Meier. He has maintained an intense activity as orchestral conductor and pianist in the company of such artists as Plácido Domingo, Gilda Cruz Romo, Sherrill Milnes, Jessye Norman, Kiri Te-Kanawa, Kathleen Battle, Ramón Vargas, Verónica Villarroel, Olivia Gorra, Rolando Villazón, Encarnación Vázquez, María Luisa Tamez, Luis Girón May and Fernando de la Mora, among others. In the summer of 2005, he was invited to participate as pianist in the master classes given by Jessye Norman at the Académie Musicale de Villecroze in Provence. Together with Tania Libertad, he has recorded the platinum CD of opera arias ¿Y porqué no? as well as three CDs with Olivia Gorra, Pecadora, Única and Mensajera Musical. At the University of Michigan, he was one of two pianists chosen to record Willis C. Patterson’s anthology of Art Songs by Black-American Composers. James Demster is principal conductor of the Harmonia Opera Company of New York, dedicated to Japanese opera, and has presented the American premieres of over thirty operas in Japanese, including several performances at Lincoln Center. He has had a long and fruitful association with the Festival Mitte Europa in Germany and has participated in Mexico City as vocal coach, pianist and conductor for SIVAM (International Society for Mexican Artistic Values). He had the distinction of conducting Mozart’s Great C-minor Mass to celebrate the renovation of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City as well as the reopening of the historical Teatro de la Ciudad with Plácido Domingo.
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