Faculty & Staff Directory

James DeMars

Two World Concerto, for Native American flutist, R. Carlos Nakai,
"...on epic scale, sweepingly dramatic and rhythmically concise." L.A. Times

Native Drumming, for the Black Lodge Pow-wow Singers and Orchestra
"...searingly honest, by turns mesmerizing, haunting, hair-raising and astonishing... just plain
gorgeous in its sonics, with strings racing over the singer-drummers like a veil of night over thedesert, and brass harmonies moving like sunlight across a mesa." Arizona Republic

Sabar, Concerto for African Drum Ensemble and Orchestra (for Mark Sunkett)
"DeMars brings the orchestra into direct union with ritual music and dance from Senegal in asonic travelogue, that was stunningly entertaining as well as culturally engaging." AR

These intercultural works have influenced other works scored for traditional ensembles:

An American Requiem (75') for chorus, soloists and orchestra, is an integration of texts by Walt Whitman and Martin Luther King Jr. with traditional Jewish, Catholic, and Native American texts.
"At the close of last night's premiere performance there could have been little doubt that JamesDeMars had met the standards of the death masses of Brahms and Britten; grand and spacious,stately, ethereal, glorious, inspired and quintessentially American, (it) speaks of untarnished dreams and naive yearnings; an intensely hopeful conjuration of all that is best about the
nation's peoples." The Washington Post

Concerto for Violin (Boro Martinic-Jercic)
"...strongly profiled, sumptuously scored, contoured lyricism and a vivacious sense of rhythm." AR

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (for Caio Pagano, release pending).

James DeMars belongs to a generation of composers that has rediscovered the range, depth and stylistic variety of tonal writing. His music is neither neo-Romantic, nor Minimal, nor in any way dependent on pastiche. It leads the ear from note to note, phrase to phrase, with freshness and vitality. Sometimes a DeMars score will draw on non-Western sources or forms and at other times, he explores the path laid down by mainstream Western art music in the 20th century.

In 1994 DeMars conducted the premiere with the Phoenix Symphony and in 1995 he conducted the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the nationally televised (PBS) performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and a subsequent performance with the Utah Symphony. In 1997 he conducted the European premiere at Eglise La Trinité in Paris with members of the Orchestre de Paris and was honored with induction to the French Order of Arts and Letters.

Ensembles that have performed his music include the Minnesota Orchestra, the California Symphony, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Anchorage Symphony, The Tucson Symphony, the Wuppertal (Germany) Symphony, Saskatchewan Symphony, the New York Choral Society, and Choer et Orchestre Français D'Oratorio. The NEA, the Heard Museum, Flynn Foundation, Art Renaissance Foundation, European-American Foundation and others have provided commissions leading to publication of music now appearing on more than 20 CDs of various labels.

A review of his second recording for Canyon Records with R. Carlos Nakai, entitled Native Tapestry, states,

"DeMars is an eclectic composer, and a thoroughly capable one- he is able to control the wide variety of materials and styles he draws upon, and avoid making them sound like a pastiche. He may remind one of Henry Cowell or Alan Hovhaness. The interweaving melodies, irregular meters- are they Persian, Chinese, or Balkan or something else entirely?
... the music develops contrasting episodes in a fluid convincing manner. a chromatic lyricism to express the European presence among the wistful Native flute and African percussion or intertwining melodies above a rhythmic ostinato alternating between eleven and eight beats (a sort of cross between a bolero and Arabic taksim), everything flows comfortably.
... the contrasting styles coexist in both langorous and bubbly counterpoint. I found it sincere, well crafted and pleasant". Fanfare Magazine

His third recording for Canyon Records with R. Carlos Nakai, entitled Two World Concerto, was a winner in two categories of the 1998 Annual Native American Music Awards. DeMars earned his doctorate at the University of Minnesota following studies with Dominick Argento and Eric Stokes. He currently teaches composition at Arizona State University in Tempe.