James T. Sale was born in Washington D.C. to music-loving parents who introduced him to classical and modern orchestral music and film music. James began drums lessons through the DC Youth Symphony at Roosevelt High School in 1978. In 1981 he began school at St John's College High School, and all-male military college prep. In 1988 James enrolled in the Film Scoring Program at Berklee College of Music in Boston. At Berklee he studied Composition and Orchestration with a major in Film Scoring. There he studied composition with Boston composer Thomas McGah. In addition to studying Film Scoring, James studied conducting privately with noted conductor David Callahan, conductor of the Brookline Symphony in Boston and a former student of Leonard Bernstein. James also studied percussion with Dean Anderson, Principal Percussionist of the Boston Ballet. After moving to Los Angeles in 1992 he began paying his dues, working as a librarian and copyist for Suzy Katayama at the Sony Music Library. Eventually he started work as an orchestrator and conductor for Bill Brown, Mike Reagan, Tim Jones, and Lee Holdridge. During this time James worked on many award-winning video games such as God of War I + II, Golden Compass, Lineage 2, Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth, and Captain America: Super Soldier to name a few. James began writing music for feature films in 1995 with The Cheshire Cat and worked on his own until becoming Mark Mothersbaugh's head writer, orchestrator and conductor after working with Mark on Herbie:Fully Loaded in 2005. James co-wrote music for top-grossing films such as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 1+2, The LEGO Movie, Hotel Transylvania 1+2, 21+22 Jumpstreet, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Chipwrecked and Road Chip, as well as Safe with Jason Statham and Last Vegas. In 2014 James began a fruitful collaboration with director Sean Hanish with Return to Zero. He then scored Sister Cities in 2016 continuing with Saint Judy which released in 2019. In Early 2020 James completed a concert piece called Dark Music for Bass Clarinet and Small Orchestra. He is an avid Washington DC sports fan supporting all the teams.
