Early Musical Training
James was born in Philadelphia in 1950 and began formal organ training at the age of 12. At the age of 16, he replaced his teacher, Leonard MacClain, in concert when the latter suffered a heart attack before the performance, and that exposure put him on an international touring circuit. James attended Indiana University's School of Music as a student of concert and church organ performance, earning his Bachelor's and Master's degrees under the tutelage of Dr. Oswald Ragatz.
James' interest in silent film performance with live music dates from 1969 at the Tower Theatre in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. As James recalls, "The late 'Flicker Fingers' himself, California touring theatre organist Gaylord Carter, was at the Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ console and on the screen Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. in The Mark of Zorro. In classic 'Chorus Line' fashion, I turned to my Dad at the end and said 'I can do that!'"
Read more about this topic: Dennis James (musician)
Famous quotes containing the words early, musical and/or training:
“Todays pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase early ripe, early rot!”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Creative force, like a musical composer, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple air or theme, now high, now low, in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it fills earth and heaven with the chant.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“The area [of toilet training] is one where a child really does possess the power to defy. Strong pressure leads to a powerful struggle. The issue then is not toilet training but who holds the reinsmother or child? And the child has most of the ammunition!”
—Dorothy Corkville Briggs (20th century)