Doctor James Paton Walsh

Dr. James Paton Walsh holds a doctorate of musical arts from Columbia University.  He has taught at Columbia University, the University of North Texas, and the University of New Orleans.  He currently teaches music composition, theory and World music at Loyola University New Orleans.  

He is a former vice president of the Guild of Composers.  His music has been performed by diverse ensembles including the New Calliope Singers, the Guild of Composers, the National Orchestral Association, the Naked Orchestra, the New Orleans New Music Ensemble, and the Loyola Wind Ensemble. He has scored informative documentaries for major corporations including Pfizer and Panasonic. In addition he wrote and performed music for films made by Climate Advocates Voces Unidas on environmental issues in Central America. 

He was the founder and conductor of the New Orleans New Music Ensemble (NONME), and is the conductor of the Naked Orchestra — an avant-garde, third stream big band.  He was the bassist and music director of Michael Ray and the Cosmic Krewe.

He has done arrangements for many projects, including Marianne Faithfull’s CD Horses and High Heels and Michael Cerveris’ Piety.  Recently he served as a music consultant, bassist, and guitarist for the HBO series Treme, in which he also portrayed himself as a recurring character.

He spoke at the Delphi Computer Music Conference in 1992, the Music Theory Society of New York State’s conference in 2004, and at the 1st International Colloquium on Musical Universals at Aix en Provence in 2010.  

Together with his wife, Janna Saslaw, he has written several articles, including “Musical Invariance as a Cognitive Structure: 'Multiple Meaning' in the Early Nineteenth Century” (in Music Theory in the Age of Romanticism, Oxford University Press), and “From Resonance to Repetition: Music, Physics, and the Mind” (in Handbook of Sound & Imagination, Cambridge University Press).