The pianist James Maddox was born in Australia in 1967 and studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Nikolai Evrov then in Italy with Alexander Lonquich and Edoardo Strabbioli.
He performs chamber music, accompanies vocal recitals and appears as soloist across Europe, in Asia and Australia. He has worked with composers such as Krysztof Penderecki, Peter Eötvös, Jörg Widmann and Graeme Koehne and has given many premiéres.
James Maddox has been a guest at the Schleswig Holstein Festival, Beethovenfest Bonn, Ruhrtriennale, Menuhin Festival Gstaad and Klavier-Festival Ruhr. He has wide experience as an orchestral pianist and has played regularly with the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, the Duisburger Philharmoniker and the Bochumer Symphoniker.
At home at the celeste and the harpsichord, James is also fascinated by historical fortepianos. Early modern concert grands by makers such as Bechstein, Ibach, Chickering and Steinway have been restored to his wishes and some now stand on concert stages or in museums.
In 2008 Mr Maddox founded the Brahms-Tage in Bonn-Endenich, an annual chamber music festival of which he is artistic director.
Here he has presented all of Brahms’ chamber works as well as most of the piano music and songs. His arrangements of the orchestral literature for chamber ensembles show these familiar works in a new light.
A duo with the Chilean-German pianist Alfredo Perl began at the Brahms-Tage; their repertoire now encompasses the Brahms Symphonies as well as a range of challenging masterworks from Bach to Messiaen.
Tours with violinist Vlad Stanculeasa have taken Mr Maddox to Switzerland, Italy, Rumania and Sweden. A series of productions for the West German Radio with members of the WDR Symphony Orchestra focussed on late romantic chamber music. He has lieder recitals with many renowned singers and soprano Ingrid Schmithüsen joined him on his double CD of Anna Magdalena Bach’s Notebook on Coviello Classics. His recording of Brahms’ violin sonatas (Coviello) is a document of a 25-year collaboration with Ida Bieler encompassing most of the duo repertoire as well as trio, quartet and quintet literature.
James Maddox has taught at the Robert-Schumann-Hochschule in Düsseldorf since 1996. He has led masterclasses for piano in Australia and Germany and for chamber music at the Latvian Academy of Music in Riga.