James M. Guthrie (D.M.A., Louisiana State University, composer, performer, and music educator), currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music, and as Artistic Director of the Meherrin Chamber Orchestra at Chowan University. Dr. Guthrie serves as the area coordinator for the Music Industry Track. In addition to course work in the music industry, his teaching duties include Applied Strings, Organ, Theory, Aural Skills, and Composition. Guthrie coordinates the annual Music Industry Day event, as well as two New Music Day concerts at Chowan.

His prior academic appointments include service at Virginia Wesleyan College, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (ULL) and at Louisiana State University (LSU). At ULL he served as Theory/Composition Department Coordinator, Professor of Organ, and Coordinator of Graduate Studies in Music. He also directed the contemporary music ensemble Musique nouvelle, and the early music ensemble - the Collegium Musicum. He coordinated two annual contemporary music festivals, a Composers Forum Guest Artist Series, hosted a Southeastern Composers' League (SCL) Forum and served as editor of the South Central Journal of Music Scores. At LSU he designed and taught undergraduate composition as a graduate teaching assistant.

Dr. Guthrie has been active in the research and performance practices of music from early periods in music history. He founded the Chowan University Collegium Musicum in 2007, and performs on a variety of period instruments, including the harpsichord, virginal, viola da gamba, and recorder. He has performed with the LSU Collegium Musicum, the Delta Viol Consort, the ULL Collegium Musicum, the Chowan University Collegium Musicum, the Meherrin Chamber Orchestra, the Chowan Chorus, the Cantata Chorus, the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.

Dr. Guthrie's compositions have been performed by a diversity of ensembles: The Chowan Singers, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the Miami University Symphony Orchestra, the LSU Symphony Orchestra, the LSU New Music Ensemble, the LSU Opera Workshop, the ULL Trumpet Ensemble, the ULL Brass Quintet, the Miami University Brass Ensemble, the Louisiana Composers Forum Ensemble, Musique nouvelle, and the Nova Fagotti trio. His solo music has been performed by such virtuosi as Andrzej Dutkiewcz, Dinos Constantinides, Linda Wetherill, Herndon Spillman, Stephen Brown, David Thomas, Amanda McLaughlin, David Jacobs, Del Lyren and Scott Landry. Guthrie's music has been featured in programs sponsored by the International Trumpet Guild, the Music Teachers National Association, The American Music Center, Meet the Composer, The Sonneck Society, The Frederic Chopin Academy (Warsaw, Poland), the American Guild of Organists, the International Double Reed Society, the College Music Society, the LSU Festival of Contemporary Music, the Society of Composers, Inc., the National Association of Composers, USA, Eglise Protestante de Strasbourg - Neudorf (France), and the Southeastern Composers' League (SCL). He is a recipient of numerous composition awards and commissions, including thirteen consecutive ASCAP standard awards. Guthrie's compositions and recordings are registered with ASCAP and distributed primarily through www.jamesguthrie.com. His compositional style ranges from formal classical studies to an advanced personal development of tonal/modal polarity. His classical studies incorporate various forms of music from the Renaissance through the 21st Century. His personal style of modern composition strives for clarity of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic expression, carefully balancing elements of form and counterpoint.

* Guthrie Composition Catalog *
* Student Comments *
* Tour of Grandview Nature Trail *
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