James W. Doyle is a percussionist, multidisciplinary collaborator, and teaching artist based in the Pacific Northwest. He performs as a chamber musician, soloist, improviser, and orchestral percussionist throughout the United States and Japan, with place and the natural world increasingly shaping his work. His ongoing Confluence series pairs single-shot, site-recorded water imagery with live performance, growing from an interest in how water and sound can quiet the mind, invite presence, and connect us more closely to our surroundings. Recent performances of Confluence include Seattle’s NonSeq series and Confluence: Within the Space of Making at Tacoma’s Museum of Glass, where vibraphone, synthesizer, and live water-inspired glassmaking came together in the museum’s Hot Shop.
James performs with the Doyle-Kane Duo for flute and percussion and tours and records with the U.S./Japan-based Apricity Trio alongside clarinetist Chiho Sugo and flutist Tracy Kane Doyle, with ongoing collaborations with sculptor Koshi Hayashi and composer Ippo Tsuboi. Recent projects include return appearances at the Nakanojo Biennale in Gunma, Japan; the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival with the Quince Ensemble; performances with violinist Maria Sampen; projects with Chicago’s ensemble Beyond This Point; and chamber concerts for the Seattle Symphony’s Octave 9 series. His most recent collaboration with composer and pianist Jennifer Bellor produced Catching Clouds, an album and performance project for vibraphone, clarinet, saxophone, and piano on the Lexicon Classics label.
As an orchestral timpanist and percussionist, James performs regularly with orchestras and opera companies throughout the Pacific Northwest. His work outside the concert hall has included more than forty recordings across Americana, country, and pop with artists in Austin, Nashville, and the Southwest, as well as performing concertina and bodhrán in Irish traditional settings. He has commissioned and premiered new percussion music from composers including inti figgis-vizueta, Molly Herron, Jennifer Bellor, Emma O’Halloran, Matthew Schildt, Juri Seo, Molly Joyce, Caleb Pickering, Rajna Swaminathan, and Alexis C. Lamb.
Through Miscellany Music, James creates programs that put percussion in conversation with other art forms and with the places where performances happen. Projects have brought together moving image, visual art, light and sound, spoken word, food, and movement, with collaborators including Susan Russell Hall, Terry Rishel, and Angelina Villalobos Soto. In the autumn of 2026, he will launch a series of live music and makerspace performances at venues throughout the Puget Sound region, curating settings where participants can engage in their own creative practices while experiencing live music and the work of other artists.
James directs the Puget Sound Percussion Festival and TYSAmba, a samba bateria for Tacoma-area students, and coaches chamber music for the Tacoma Youth Symphony Association. He teaches musicology and serves on the Community Music School faculty at the University of Puget Sound and is a recurring artist-in-residence at Gunma University in Japan. Previously, James spent fifteen years at Adams State University, where he was Professor of Music, directed the percussion program and Music of the Americas Ensemble, and taught graduate courses in music education. He later served on the faculty at Saint Martin’s University and has taught and held residencies at institutions and festivals in the United States, Australia, and Japan.
Earlier in his career, James toured the United States as principal percussionist of the United States Air Force Band of the Golden West and later deployed throughout the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and Africa as a drum set player with the Air National Guard Band of the Southwest’s rock band. He is an artist and educator with Marimba One, Vic Firth, Beetle Percussion, and Black Swamp Percussion and holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of Puget Sound, expanding his work and interests at the intersection of music, creativity, and human well-being.
