Weber, Clarinet Quintet - Finale (Lonquich, Keefe, Kavafian, Lee, Canellakis) Live in New York
Singer, saxophonist, flautist, frontman and songwriter, James Thompson is a personality like no other.
With an engaging and distinctive approach, James is an entertaining frontman in multiple musical genres. His multi-faceted vocal style is unique and fresh, moving seamlessly from Pop to Smooth Jazz, and from Chillout/Lounge to Soul and R & B.
Demonstrating a mastery of saxophones and C flute (his principle instruments), James is a versatile multi-instrumentalist, also playing electric and acoustic guitars, electric bass and keyboards.
For his 2009 CD “Different Faces”, James performed all of the vocals and played all the instruments except drums, with Adriano Molinari and Eugenio Bonetti supplying the drum tracks.
His 2014 collaboration with singer and percussionist Flavio Piscopo produced the CD “Tale of Two Cities”, a mix of James’s California roots in Soul and R & B, and Flavio’s Meditteranean sounds. Their single “Full Immersion” rose to 32° on the Traxsource Top 100 R & B charts.
Having first performed solo around 1984, James has continued to establish himself as a songwriter, producing his own work and exploring different styles and genres. James also continues his diverse music collaborations, live on stage and in the recording studio.
James has toured with the Italian Pop superstar Zucchero Fornaciari on his “Black Cat World Tour 2016”, where James’s talents were on display as saxophonist, flautist, background vocalist and Blues Harp Man.
A veteran musician with four decades of performing, recording and touring, James continues to reinvent himself, all the while staying true to his varied musical roots.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, James Thompson feels deeply Californian, having moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was two.
As a teenager in California in the endlessly interesting 1960’s, he grew up listening to every kind of music: Soul, R & B, Rock, Jazz, Pop and Blues, at a time when every radio station broadcast all of the different musical styles and artists. James was deeply influenced by that music, as well as by the restless, tumultuous, and rapidly changing times the United States was going through.