James Robert Lowe

James Robert Lowe has performed across the United States and in the summer of 2009 made his European premier when he was chosen as one of 16 instrumentalists from around the world to perform at the soundSCAPE festival in Pavia, Italy. He is an advocate of chamber music with guitar and performs regularly with small and large ensembles. He has been a soloist with the Omaha Symphony, Opera Omaha, Peabody Chamber Opera, and the Greater Baltimore Youth Orchestra.

As a champion of new music he co-founded and was co-artistic director of The Ligetisplit Ensemble, with whom he still performs. He has also performed with several world-renown new music performers including soprano Tony Arnold and mandolinist Avi Avatel.

He is currently working on his most ambitious project yet – his first solo guitar recording. He is traveling to Milan, Italy to record an album of 19th, 20th, and 21st century Italian music by Mauro Giuliani, Geoffredo Petrassi, Domenico Scarlatti, and Giovanni Albini. He is scheduled to premier the album in the summer of 2011 at the highSCORE festival in Pavia, Italy, where he will be a guest artist and lecturer.

His many awards include: The Christopher Parkening Masterclass in Bozeman, Montana, an Honors Certificate from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, State Representative and Honorable Mention at the 2007 MTNA Composition Competition, two scholarships to attend The New York Guitar Seminar at Mannes College of Music in New York City, a full scholarship to Domaine Forget Music Academy in Quebec, Canada, the “Guitar Plus International” scholarship to perform and study in Italy, and grants from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Peabody Conservatory, and The Alumni Association of The Johns Hopkins University.

He holds a Bachelors in Music from The University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he finished as a double major in Guitar Performance and Religion and wrote his thesis on the influence of Catholic Theology on the compositional techniques in the music of 20th century French composer Olivier Messiaen. He also holds a Masters of Music in Guitar Performance from the prestigious Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is current pursuing a Graduate Performance Certificate as a protégé of Julian Gray.

James Robert Lowe is on faculty at the International School of Music in Bethesda, Maryland where he teaches private lessons and directs guitar ensembles. He is the guitar assistant at The Peabody Institute to Manuel Barrueco, Ray Chester, and Julian Gray.