James D. Hicks

James D. Hicks lives and works out of Califon, NJ, USA. He holds degrees in music from the Peabody Institute of Music of Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, and the University of Cincinnati. Other studies include courses at the Royal School of Church Music in England. He is an Associate of the American Guild of Organists. 

Hicks was Director of Music at The Presbyterian Church, Morristown, NJ from 1985–2011, where he conducted many of the church's ensembles, administered the concert series, and served as organist.
 

Jim has appeared as a concert organist throughout the United States, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. Over the past 20 years, he has made 16 recordings on the Pro Organo label. The first, American Classic Fantastic, was recorded at the Presbyterian Church in Morristown, NJ in 2003, and demonstrates the extensive rebuild of that instrument from the 1990s, a project that Hicks oversaw. This disc features several world premiere recordings of twentieth and twenty-first-century American repertoire, including two original works. The National Public Media program Pipedreams, hosted by Michael Barone, has broadcast several of the tracks from American Classic Fantastic, and it has received considerable notice in the media.
 

Over the past 15 years, Jim has intensively researched a relatively unknown and unexplored corner of the organ repertoire: the music of Nordic countries. The series is called Nordic Journey and is now an ongoing endeavor. The series seeks to commission new works from some of the leading composers from northern Europe (over 65 commissioned works thus far), discover unpublished and, hitherto, unknown works from previous eras, highlight compositions that have never been recorded, as well as celebrating a few of the standard masterpieces of the Nordic school. 

The Nordic Journey series has received considerable media coverage, including an entire program on the NPM show Pipedreams, hosted by Michael Barone, and two interviews on Wisconsin Public Radio, all in 2014. Pipedreams continued to broadcast many tracks from the more recent Nordic Journey discs throughout 2016 and 2017. The Belgian based Organroxx Radio has also broadcast several of the Nordic Journey discs during this time, as did the St. Louis American Guild of Organists Chapter.
 

Kalmar Cathedral, Kalmar, Sweden was the venue for 2015's Nordic Journey, Volume V—Many Landscapes. Recorded in April of that year and released in September, this double CD lives up to its title by including organ compositions that span the entire northern world: works from Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Five pieces composed by Sven-Ingvart Mikkelsen, Fredrik Sixten, Kjell Mørk Karlsen, Pauli í Sandagerði, and Thomas Åberg were composed specifically for Many Landscapes. The unique nature of this edition of Nordic Journey was enhanced by it being the premiere recording of the cathedral's Tostareds organ, built in 2013. Jim supported this release by performing 20 concerts at music festivals throughout the Nordic world in 2015.
 

The music of Finland is the subject of Nordic Journey, Volume VI, released in September 2016. This double disc was recorded in June of the same year at two locations in Turku, the ancient capital of Finland. Disc one features the 1980 Virtanen organ of Turku Cathedral, the most historic location of the country. Two commissioned works by contemporary Finnish composers, Mauri Viitala and Santeri Siimes, plus several multi-movement, previously unknown works from the Romantic era form the basis of this part of the release. The colorful 2002 Gronlunds organ at St. Michael's, Turku was the perfect vehicle for a program of smaller works of contrasting styles, including the four organ compositions of Jack Mattsson, a transcription of a work by Jean Sibelius, and two pieces by St. Michael's organist Marko Hakanpää. Jim promoted Nordic Journey, Volume VI in New Zealand, northern Europe, and the United States throughout 2016.

In the same trip, Jim recorded Nordic Journey Volume X, a double-disc set devoted to music from Denmark, using two notable venues in that country: Helligåndskirken, Copenhagen, and St. Morten's Church, Randers. Jim welcomed organist George Chittenden in a performance of a four-hand Fantasi by nineteenth-century composer Gustav Adolf Mankell. Disc one, recorded in Copenhagen, concerns itself with Romantic Era works, plus Carl Nielsen's epic Commotio, while disc two contains music from the Danish Neo-Classic and Contemporary schools. Norsk Musikforlag published Jim's The Nordic Journey Series Volume II in October 2020, a hardbound edition containing thirteen works from Nordic composers, eleven of which are compositions that Jim had commissioned over recent years. 

Jim continued his recording activities after the pandemic abated and recorded his largest project, Nordic Journey Volume XI, on the Paschen-Kiel organ at Central Pori Church, Pori Finland in November 2021. This triple disc collection was divided into three sections with the first disc being devoted to works from Nordic Romanticism, the second disc comprising contemporary works, while the third disc concerned itself with French Influence in Nordic music. Jim was joined by Finnish oboist Seidi Palonen in a new work by Norwegian composer Kjell Mørk Karlsen and volume XI includes thirteen commissioned compositions.

In March 2022, Jim traveled to Oslo Norway for Nordic Journey Volume XII, a double disc collection featuring an all-Norwegian program. Recorded at Uranienborg Kirke, Jim was joined by Norwegian artists recorder virtuoso Caroline Eidsten Dahl, a quartet of Norwegian folk violinists, the percussion ensemble Sisu, and a quartet of brass players from the Oslo Philharmonic. 

Jim's publishing relationship with the Norwegian firm Norsk Musikforlag produced The Nordic Journey Series Volume III, a large hardbound book that featured a variety of older works appearing in print for the first times as well as many new and commissioned works associated with his recordings. 

The year 2024 saw Jim undertaking two separate projects at one time. In May, he recorded the double-disc Nordic Journey Volume XVI-Germanic Connections as he returned to the Link/Gaida organ at Pauluskirche, Ulm, Germany. The program demonstrates the centuries-old line between Nordic and German organ music. The idea stemmed from the many generations of Nordic musicians who received their training in Germany and the ensuing influence of the latter's music upon Scandinavian expression. The reverse cultural influence is found in German musicians who followed the music of Edvard Grieg, Jean Sibelius and Carl Nielsen. The folk music of Norway, for example, found expression in Max Drischner's Nordische toccata und Fuge, g-moll. The program follows this interaction with music from Poland, the Baltic lands and Bohemia in addition to the usual destinations of the Nordic lands and Germany. Volume XVI includes one large commissioned work Seven Paintings on German Monuments by Hamburg-based composer Andreas Willscher (b. 1955). The seven movements are conceived in the musical language of German Impressionist Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933), and offer depictions of various locations and events in German history and culture. 

Jim's second endeavor of 2024 took him to the northern Norwegian city of Bodø where he utilized the large Eule organ at that location's cathedral for a double-disc collection entitled Nordic Journey Volume XVII-North Atlantic Voyage. This is a musical voyage that traces the westward expansion of the Norse people, beginning in Norway, and following this route of immigration to the northern Scottish Islands of Orkeny and Shetland, the outer Hebrides, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and, finally, to North American in which jazz-influence work are created by the Norwegian musician Mons Leidvin Takle. Volume XVII includes ten commissioned compositions by artists from these locations. For three works in the Icelandic tradition, Jim returned to the iconic Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík to complete the project.

The year 2025 will see Jim returning in January to the Paschen-Kiel organ in Pori, Finland for Volume XIX, a project entitled Around The Baltic Sea in which music from all states that border this body of water will be focus of the endeavor. A June project is planned for the historic Åkerman organ at Uppsala Cathedral, Sweden where he will record Nordic Journey Volume XIX, a single-disc program that features a unique commissioned work by Swedish composer Fredrik Sixten, A Nordic Organ Book. The collection includes twenty-four preludes in all major and minor keys. Volume XIX will also include earlier works from the Swedish tradition.