James (Jimmy) Cunningham IV was born in Pittsburgh, PA, and recently moved to Houston to study with James Dunham at Rice University. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan where he studied with Yizhak Schotten, and an Artist Diploma from the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings where he worked with Victoria Chiang and Rebecca Albers. During his Artist Diploma, he also worked closely with mentors Lawrence Dutton and Annie Fullard, and performed in numerous chamber ensembles alongside Amy Schwartz Moretti, Cho-Liang Lin, Andy Armstrong, Ettore Causa, and others.
During summer of 2024, Cunningham was a member of the New Fromm Quartet at the Tanglewood Music Center. In addition to working with student composers to premier brand-new compositions, the quartet presented a wide variety of contemporary chamber works under the direction of curators Tania León and Steven Mackey. During summer 2023, Cunningham was an orchestral fellow at Tanglewood; and from 2018 to 2022, he spent four summers at the Aspen Music Festival as an orchestral fellow. While at Aspen, he performed as Principal Viola of the Aspen Opera Orchestra and Assistant Principal Viola of the Aspen Chamber Symphony.
In 2016, Cunningham performed with the National Youth Orchestra of the USA at Carnegie Hall conducted by Christoph Eschenbach and Valery Gergiev. That fall, Cunningham debuted with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra performing the Telemann Double Concerto with his teacher at the time, Marylène Gingras-Roy. He hopes to have a viola studio of his own in the future, and at home he enjoys making pasta from scratch and exploring manual espresso.