BIO

James Mountain is an APRA Screen Music Award-winning, Sydney-based composer of music for concert, stage, and screen. His music seeks to blend the intricate with the accessible, combining varying styles and genres to create a sound that is distinctly his own.

With a background in classical performance, James was awarded a Queen’s College Chorister Scholarship in 2015 and attended the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, studying guitar under Tonié Field and A/Prof. Ken Murray. In 2016, he was accepted into the composition program and completed a Bachelors Degree (with Honours) in Music in 2018, majoring in composition and studying under A/Prof. Stuart Greenbaum and Dr Katy Abbott.

Whilst studying, James entered the 2016 Matt Withers Australian Music Composition Competition and secured both First Place, and the Under 25 Emerging Composer Award for his guitar solo Between Tall Trees. Of his winning piece, adjudicator and composer Robert Davidson wrote, ‘excellent counterpoint, effective and very idiomatic guitar writing, clear conception, strong melody and harmonic direction. Engaging throughout.’ James’s success in the competition led to a commission by Withers to arrange Spanish Romance for guitar and symphony orchestra in December 2016. The piece was toured nationally in 2017 by Withers who performed with the Geelong Symphony Orchestra and the Woollahra Philharmonic as part of the tour.

James also discovered a love for musical theatre during his undergraduate studies, musically directing several amateur theatre productions at Melbourne University, and winning the Union House Theatre Best Conductor Award for his work on Queen’s College’s production of Legally Blonde in 2017. In the same year, James’s original one-act musical Green Room was featured at the Melbourne Fringe Festival for a three-night run going on to win the 2017 R.M. Eggleston Literary Arts Award.

James’s exposure to narrative composition in a theatrical setting led naturally to a discovery and love of film scoring, and in 2019, he began a Master of Arts Screen (Film Composition) at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) in Sydney, studying under Cameron Patrick. Whilst completing his Masters, James continued to compose concert works, winning 2nd Prize in the 2019 Athenaeum Club Composition Competition for his piano trio Moons We Live With. James was also commissioned to write a piano solo, isimili, for Melbourne-based pianist David Coates which was premiered in June 2019.

Completing a thesis on ‘Generically Subversive Film Scoring’ gave James the seed for his creative output during his two-year postgraduate degree. Award-winning films featuring his music have screened nationally and internationally in film festivals including the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Aesthetica Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival and Raindance Film Festival (Mud Crab); St Kilda Film Festival, Schnit Worldwide Short Film Festival, and Poitiers Film Festival (Sunset Country); the Sydney Film Festival, Flickerfest and Short Shorts Festival & Asia 2022 (Sunnies); the Antenna Documentary Film Festival, Brisbane International Film Festival, Byron Bay Underground Film Festival, and Vegan Film Festival (With the Cattle); SeriesFest and Stareable Fest LA (Death Doula).

Sunnies was awarded the 2021 CAPA CILECT Prize for Best Fiction Film, and Mud Crab was awarded the 2022 CAPA CILECT Prize for Best Fiction Film, and placed 4th overall worldwide.

In 2023, for his work on the AACTA Award-nominated short film Mud Crab, James won Best Music for a Short Film at the APRA AMCOS Screen Music Awards, Best Original Music in an Australian Short Film at the 2023 Flickerfest Film Festival, Best Original Score at the St Kilda Film Festival, and Best Original Score (National) at the Canberra Short Film Festival.

Contact James for more info.