Composer, producer, and pianist James Primosch (1956-2021) composed liturgical music for and performed jazz with leading artists and ensembles from around the world. Primosch studied at Cleveland State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. While he had a great fondness for jazz, his musical voice ranged from the lyrical to the starkly angular. He was also a church musician and his compositions were based on sacred or religious materials. At the University of Pennsylvania, he nurtured aspiring composers for more than 30 years. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Regional Artists Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome, and the Stoeger Prize of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him its 2020 Virgil Thomson Award in Vocal Music. According to The New York Times, his works were “impressive, surprising, grandly romantic, and very accessible.”
James Primosch
Studios
Sprague-Smith
James Primosch worked in the Sprague-Smith studio.
In January of 1976, the original Sprague-Smith Studio — built in 1915–1916 and funded by music students of Mrs. Charles Sprague-Smith of the Veltin School — was destroyed by fire. Redesigned by William Gnade, Sr., a Peterborough builder, the fieldstone structure was rebuilt the same year from the foundation up, reusing the original fieldstone. A few…