Alysia James

Bio

Alysia Michelle James is an interdisciplinary composer whose work spans music composition, dance, aerial arts, and multimedia performance. She earned a BA in Music Composition from the University of California, Santa Barbara College of Creative Studies in 2010 and completed a Master of Music in Composition at California State University, Long Beach in 2020.

James has composed extensively for dance and aerial performance and has presented her work internationally as both a composer and performer. She has also served as a lecturer for Music for Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her current research focuses on composer-choreographer Julius Eastman and examines his embodied compositional approach to interdisciplinary artmaking, with the goal of further connecting music studies and dance studies.

Her collaborative work as a composer and performer with William Close and the Earth Harp Collective has been featured nationally. James has presented and performed work at venues and festivals including Currents New Media Festival, SIGGRAPH, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, the International Computer Music Conference, Not Man Apart Physical Theatre Ensemble, and BlizzCon, among others. She is currently a PhD candidate in Music Composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara.