Music Director and conductor of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College, and Director of the Percussion Ensemble at the Mannes College of Music. He is also Guest Conductor of the Slee Sinfonietta at the Institute for 21st-Century Music in Buffalo and the principal conductor of the Talea Ensemble. He has led concerts across North America, Europe, and Asia at festivals including the Beijing Modern Festival, Monday Evening Concerts, United States Library of Congress, Internationales Musikinstitut in Darmstadt, Wien Modern, and the TRANSIT Festival. He has collaborated with composers on hundreds of world and American premieres, including John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Earl Brown, Charles Wuorinen, Mario Davidovsky, Hans Werner Henze, Roger Reynolds, Hans Abrahamsen, Milton Babbitt, Donald Martino, Elliott Carter, Stefano Gervasoni, David Felder, George Crumb, Beat Furrer, Olga Neuwirth, and Georges Aperghis. An active composer of electroacoustic music, James Baker has won a Bessie award for his composition for dance. He has written extensively for the theatre and for various ensembles with electronics and has composed a number of pieces for long-time collaborator, choreographer Tere O’Connor. Recent commissions include the Opéra Ballet de Lyon, BAM Next Wave, The Dublin Dance Festival, and the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.