James McVinnie

James McVinnie is an organist and keyboard player whose work brings Bach and early keyboard music into dialogue with contemporary composition, minimalism and electronics. His background in church music includes appointments at Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral.

His Bedroom Community debut, Cycles (2013), features music written for him by Nico Muhly, and was followed by the remix album Cycles_1. On Counterpoint (2021), he pairs J. S. Bach with Philip Glass, combining live organ performances with studio work.

He directs the James McVinnie Ensemble, a group of keyboard players whose roots lie in a 2017 Barbican performance of Glass’s Music in Twelve Parts. His collaborations include Muhly’s organ concerto Register, Gabriella Smith’s Breathing Forests, and Tristan Perich’s Infinity Gradient, written for pipe organ and 100 speakers. He was artist in residence at the Southbank Centre in 2024.