James M. Creed (b. 1993) is a score-maker and guitarist currently based in London. His scores are mostly concerned with ways of playing together and the ways that we ask things of each other. His work tends to use a mixtures of prose text, graphic and staff notations to make approachable invitations to play. As such, realisations of his scores can vary greatly and are informed as much by the personalities of those who play them as by anything he has written, though they do tend to sound quiet, tonal and slow. The sounds he makes when improvising or interpreting scores by others are generally similar.

James’s music has been played regularly by friendly collaborators in and around London, including performances at Union Chapel, Bishopsgate Institute, the Extinction Rebellion Waterloo encampment, Matchstick Piehouse Theatre, and Goldsmiths, University of London where he concluded undergraduate studies in Music in 2020. Outside his studies at Goldsmiths James has undertaken additional consultation in composition with Laurence Crane, Amber Priestley, and Antoine Beuger, all kindly supported by the Bert Jansch Foundation.

Recent, ongoing and upcoming significant projects include: commission of a score for Sarah Hetrick, saxophonist, by Tetractys New Music (Austin, Texas) for Net Work, spring 2021; collaborative performance of The Hollies, for example and Lomond (both 2020) at Co-Incidence Festival (Boston Massachusetts) virtually in January 2021 and in-person summer 2021; Seven Lines for the Ligeti Quartet selected for workshop by the Ligeti Quartet for the first round of their Workout! project, autumn 2020; debut album Southcote released with NX Records featuring realisations of five scores for electronics by the composer and the same five scores for piano by Fernando Yada Rodrigues, autumn 2020; independent release of Piano Studies 1-6, performed by the composer, for Piano Day 2021; independent release of solo improvisations for guitar Christmas Day, Walworth, 2020 and Easter Sunday, Deptford, 2020; invited one-month residency in Krems an der Donau, Austria through AiR Niederösterreich throughout June 2021.