James Roberts Bio

James Roberts Bio Mr. James Roberts (RHS Music Technology and Music Theory) received his undergraduate degree from Ohio University in 1973. (BM in Theory and Composition – Master Classes with John Cage and Gordon Mumma) As an undergraduate at Ohio University, in 1971, he won the University's concerto competition and performed the Ravel Concerto in G with the University Symphony. After graduation, he traveled and studied in Salzburg, Austria, returning to complete teacher certification at Fairleigh Dickinson University. During many of these higher-education experiences, he pursued a teaching career- - both as a private teacher, and as a classroom teacher in public and private schools in New Jersey. His teaching experience ranges from kindergarten through college, and includes directing choirs and musicals, and teaching classroom general music and group piano classes. In 1979, he entered California Institute of the Arts on a full piano scholarship. There, he pursued a master's degree with a double major, studying piano with Leonid Hambro and electronic music with Morton Subotnick. He also had master classes in composition with Leonard Rosenman and was coached by Aaron Copland in a master class of Copland’s Sextet for Clarinet, Piano and String Quartet. Later, at the Chubb Institute in New Jersey, he trained as a computer programmer. Meanwhile, his interest in composing and performing electronic music was growing along with the technology in that field. It was this interest and expertise that led him to be appointed head of the New York Headquarters for Fairlight Computer Musical Instruments, the Australian company that pioneered "sampling" for synthesizers. At Fairlight, he was Product Specialist, Director of Education, and Senior Applications Consultant, working with well-known recording artists and film composers. While running the New York office, he taught computer music, briefly, at New York University. When Fairlight asked him to come to the main US offices in Los Angeles, he took advantage of the opportunity and moved his family to the San Fernando Valley. His work with Fairlight eventually led to composing for film and television in Hollywood. In California, Mr. Roberts wrote and recorded music for a number of films, television, and video projects-- a successful venture that was clouded by his personal differences about professional ethics in the film capitol. Wanting a better life for his family led him back to New Jersey in 1985, where he began working as a free-lance arranger, synthesist, and record producer for Silver, Burdette & Ginn. He has worked on everything from writing and proofreading piano arrangements to producing entire recording projects. He produced all of the instrumental tracks for their British Edition of the “World of Music”, and produced the recordings for the Orff project and the Keyboard book. He wrote the seventh and eighth grade sight-singing books, produced fifty-nine compact discs for the “World of Music” series in addition to producing 220 new instrumental tracks, arranging and performing many of them, and then mixing and assembling the finished masters onto an additional 19 compact disks. His databases, developed by himself specifically to handle projects of this scope, were used to generate all of the CD labels, record jacket copy, locate all master tapes, and basically keep track of projects of this scope. After leaving SB&G to become the Executive Producer for Macmillan/McGraw-Hill in 1991, Mr. Roberts produced over 2500 individual pieces of music ranging from folk music ensembles to Big Band to full orchestral arrangements. Additionally, he produced the vocal sessions with children from all around the country to create the “Share the Music” series. He expanded his databases to keep track of all of the materials in this huge project, including every studio, performer, and arranger. Additional databases he designed, aided the Dover Clinic in Dover, NJ to become the Zufall Health Clinic (now a Federally Qualified Health Center with branches all over NJ). He consulted with the clinic (founded by his wife’s parents, Dr. Robert Zufall and his wife Kathryn) to enable years of patient visits data to be reported to the NJ Department of Health in Trenton. In 1994, he decided to return to teaching. This is when he came to the Randolph Township School System. He spent his first six years in Randolph at Ironia Elementary School teaching general music. After he was encouraged to write a new Music Technology curriculum by his supervisor and designing a lab for the program, Mr. Roberts was transferred to Randolph High School in 2000 to implement the courses. He is currently teaching Music Technology 1&2 and the music theory classes: Understanding Music and Music Theory – Honors at Randolph High School. .

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