James Aldridge is a PhD candidate at Case Western Reserve University. His work focuses on risk, resistance, and sonic expressions of selfhood in mid-century jazz. His dissertation project is titled “Aesthetic Resistance and Musical Strategies of Self Creation: Subversive Improvisation in 1960s Jazz.”

In 2019, James was a CWRU fellow at the Library of Congress. He has presented at conferences for the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation and has published work in Jazz Perspectives.

James holds degrees in jazz performance and musicology from McGill University.