Dr James Olsen is College Teaching Associate in music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and an Affiliated Lecturer within the Faculty of Music. His research interests include the theory and analysis of music from the eighteenth century to the present, hermeneutics, critical theory, and music education.
He is also a composer, and his works have been performed by, amongst others, the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Three commercial recordings of his music have been released.
At Cambridge, Dr Olsen supervises music undergraduates for courses on the analysis and history of music, as well as composition, and he lectures for the second-year analysis course.
Dr Olsen has a strong interest in music education. He is the Widening Participation and Outreach Officer at the Society for Music Analysis, and the founder of Olsen Verlag, a social enterprise whose purpose is to bring Western art music to wider audiences.
