"Introverted, smart, not seduced by any fashion of the moment might describe the music of Jim Fox. A quiet music that is not made to grab your ear rudely. It is certainly a great American music, but one could also say a great 'Southern Californian' music. Such a term might bring to mind images of strip malls and billboards, but when I listen I think of the Inland Empire’s deserts, the Angeles National Forest, the Channel Islands." —Carl Stone
"This is music that sounds like it was made in California—not the California of celluloid freeway madness, but rather that California of cool northern beaches or the Mojave Desert as seen in the stark intimacy of Joshua Tree or even the remembered despair of the landscape around Donner Pass. This is a music of honesty, seductive and delicate yet strong and dark. In a way, Fox is a quintessential California composer in the lineage of Cowell, Rudhyar, and Harrison. Like theirs, his is music that could come only from the West." —Daniel Lentz
"One of the striking qualities of Jim Fox's compositions is that you can still hear them inside you long after the music is over." —Wadada Leo Smith
"Jim Fox is a fine composer with an appreciation for the glory of space and a tendency to teach notes how to swim in it," —Josef Woodard, Santa Barbara Independent
“Phenomenally beautiful…[Fox’s music] is slow and moody, containing few events, though it is not without a certain pulsing energy. It is also written for some pretty odd combinations of instruments.… Were Fox a grim Eastern European patriarch who had suffered under Communism, like Arvo Pärt or Alfred Schnittke, musical pundits would listen and exclaim, ‘How soulful!’ But Americans are never quite allowed to get away with such depth of expression achieved through simple, clear means.” —Kyle Gann, Chamber Music magazine
Music on CDs
Colorless sky became fog, Cold Blue CB0036
Colorless sky became fog, The Wire Tapper 33 (The Wire, 20'13)
Black Water, Cold Blue CB0037
The pleasure of being lost, Innova Recordings 846
Descansos, past, Cold Blue CB0021
The City the Wind Swept Away, Cold Blue CB0015
Between the Wheels, Cold Blue CB0009
Appearance of Red, Cold Blue CB0008
Among Simple Shadows, Cold Blue CB0005
All Fall Down, Composers Recordings Inc. (CRI) 866
The Copy of the Drawing, Cold Blue CB0001
Last Things, Cold Blue CB0001
Ballad of a Gunfighter (filmscore), Citadel STC 77119
Between the Wheels, Raptoria Caam RCD 1001
Forthcoming music on CDs
In the same river, ants records (Italy)
blue photographs — piano music, Cold Blue Music
Music on LPs
Appearance of Red, Cold Blue Records L10
Solo for Single-Reed Instrument, Advance Recordings FGR-13
New Morning Pallor, Grenadilla Records, GS 1046
Nine-Fifty, Zanja Records, ZR-2
All Things Fancy, disc accompanying New Directions for Clarinet (first edition only), University of California Press
As it was, song--Improvisers' Orchestra, Advance Recordings, FGR-2AS
(group compositions and improvisations)
