Described by critics as "austere" and "sensuous" and "filled with a beautiful sadness," his music has been recorded on the Cold Blue, CRI, Advance, Grenadilla, Raptoria Caam, and Citadel labels and published in such new music anthologies as Soundings and Scores. His Cold Blue recording Last Things (CB0001) was chosen as a Record of the Year (2000) by the Italian music magazine Blow Up and The Wire magazine (UK) described it as "an ethereal experience." International Record Review wrote of it: "Fox’s music invites one to believe that if the stars, constellations and galaxies emitted sounds, these unearthly harmonics are what one might hear." John Schaefer, producer of WNYC’s New Sounds, described Fox’s second Cold Blue recording, The City the Wind Swept Away, as a "beautiful and evocative work," and e/i magazine described it as " captivating and truly refreshing." Of Fox's recording Descansos, past, John Schaefer wrote that it has a "lush bleakness that evokes the windswept open spaces of the American West," and Frank J. Oteri, editor of the American Music Center's NewMusicBox, wrote, "Easily the most beautiful thing I heard all week ... haunting ... deep on so many levels ... you won't want to listen to anything for a while after you've heard this."
In the late 1970s, Fox briefly taught electronic music at the University of Redlands, and subsequently has visited universities across the U.S. as a guest composer. He co-edited, with Barney Childs and Elliot Schwartz , the second (expanded) edition of Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (DaCapo Press, 1998) and has edited many film-related books for Silman-James Press. He is the founder/director of the Cold Blue Music record label. He has designed the CD covers for most Cold Blue releases and a good number of releases from other new music labels.
Fox lives in Venice, California.
International Record Review's column "Too Many Records," written in Feb. '08 by Jim Fox (pdf)
Mark Alburger's interview with Fox from 21st-Century Music magazine
"La rebelión de los antioxidantes" interview with JIim Fox regarding Cold Blue and more (en Español)