Based in greater Boston, James Lorusso is a collaborative pianist with professional experience in everything from art song and chamber music to musical theater and jazz improvisation.

James studied collaborative piano at the New England Conservatory of Music with Cameron Stowe and Jonathan Feldman. At NEC, he worked in the voice and opera department and appeared regularly in the schools’ Liederabend series, for which he once performed the complete songs of Rachmaninoff’s magnificent Op. 34. In the summer of 2023, he was a collaborative piano fellow at the Aspen Music Festival’s Opera Theater and Vocal Arts program, directed by Renée Fleming and Patrick Summers. In addition to performances in the festival’s art song showcase recitals, James played for coachings and masterclasses with Ms. Fleming, Metropolitan Opera coach Pierre Vallet, Tony Award-winning actress Audra McDonald, and Broadway music director Andy Einhorn. As a solo pianist, he attended summer festivals at Brevard Music Center and the New Orleans Piano Institute, where he won 3rd prize in the solo competition and an honorable mention in the concerto competition.

In 2019, James was an accompanist on music staff at the College Light Opera Company in Falmouth MA, where he helped open nine shows in a single summer and played keyboard in the pit orchestra. James was also the rehearsal pianist for White Snake Projects, an activist contemporary opera company, on its 2023 production of Let’s Celebrate—a sequence of four short chamber operas. When the company was invited to appear on WGBH at the Boston Public Library, he joined the cast to perform excerpted scenes. Other recent collaborations and performance projects include NEC’s spring production of Die Fledermaus, Hogfish Arts Residency’s production of Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias, and White Snake Projects’s Sing Out Strong: Emancipated Voices concert.

James holds degrees in piano performance from Ithaca College and McGill University. In addition to his other performance and rehearsal engagements, he holds the post of pianist and organist at St. Irene’s Parish in Carlisle MA and is an accompanist and pianist coach at Wayland Public Schools.