Deceased August 25, 2021
View alumni profile (log in required)
Read obituary
In Memory
A musician, pilot and avid skydiver, Jim passed away on Aug. 25 of cardiac arrest, having just completed a skydiving jump.
Jim grew up in Newton, Mass., and entered Amherst in fall 1972. Freshman-year roommate Joe Burt ’76 recalls that the first thing he saw when he entered their room in James was Jim waving a baton, conducting the music coming from his stereo system. Floormate Bill Dwyer ’76 remembers being impressed that Jim arrived at Amherst with the full score of a symphony he had written in high school.
Jim joined various musical organizations, including the Mount Holyoke-Amherst Chamber Orchestra, for which he served as student conductor. He worked closely with music department faculty, including Lewis Spratlan; graduated magna cum laude; and won the Sundquist Prize for excellence in musical composition and performance.
After Amherst, Jim received a master’s degree from Yale, where he studied conducting. For 29 years, he played for the Boston Pops (performing on a 1790 Helmer violin that formerly belonged to Emanuel Fiedler, father of late Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler). He also served as cover conductor and unofficial backup for Keith Lockhart. Jim occasionally conducted the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and served as music director of the Brockton Symphony Orchestra, the Newton Symphony Orchestra and other Boston-area ensembles.
Composer John Williams, a close friend and mentor, described Jim’s passing as “shocking, sad and terribly painful. … He was a man of many brilliant accomplishments, and he possessed a particularly generous, loving and kind soul and spirit. It is a very great loss, and he will be missed forever.”
Jim is survived by his wife of nearly 12 years, Marianne, and two brothers, Thomas and me. (For a link to Jim’s Boston Globe obituary, visit his In Memory page on Amherst’s website.)
Cliff Orent ’72