Bryan James

Bryan James was born in Auckland on the 23rd of August 1949 and educated at Auckland University (MA Hons, Anthropology); Canterbury, Massey (Certificate of Japanese Studies & PGDipSLT), Christchurch College of Education (Diploma of Tchg in Speech-Language Therapy).

He is a registered music teacher of flute, saxophone and theory and plays soprano, alto and baritone saxophones, concert and alto flutes, and Japanese shakuhachi (an end-blown bamboo flute). Bryan studied traditional shakuhachi playing while living in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan 1992-95. Since returning to NZ, James (also known as James Shinyo) has performed traditional Japanese music in Soyokaze (shakuhachi and koto), flute ensemble music with Crofton Flute Ensemble and also plays in other jazz and improvisation ensembles. He was featured in the 2001 International Jazz Festival with a quartet playing traditional Japanese music blended with jazz. Bryan is interested in music outside of the western art music tradition and in extended techniques for woodwinds. As well as studying traditional music in Japan, he has had lessons on the Chinese flute (dizi) while at Hunan Normal University in Changsha, China Dec 1986-Jan 1987.

Currently Bryan is employed as a secondary school teacher of Japanese and French at Te Kura, New Zealand Correspondence School. Here, he is the curriculum leader for languages. He is married with 5 children.