James D. Hicks lives and works out of Califon, NJ, USA. He holds degrees in music from the Peabody Institute of Music of Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, and the University of Cincinnati. Other studies include courses at the Royal School of Church Music in England. He is an Associate of the American Guild of Organists. 

Hicks was Director of Music at The Presbyterian Church, Morristown, NJ from 1985–2011, where he conducted many of the church's ensembles, administered the concert series, and served as organist.
 

Jim has appeared as a concert organist throughout the United States, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. Over the past 20 years, he has made 16 recordings on the Pro Organo label. The first, American Classic Fantastic, was recorded at the Presbyterian Church in Morristown, NJ in 2003, and demonstrates the extensive rebuild of that instrument from the 1990s, a project that Hicks oversaw. This disc features several world premiere recordings of twentieth and twenty-first-century American repertoire, including two original works. The National Public Media program Pipedreams, hosted by Michael Barone, has broadcast several of the tracks from American Classic Fantastic, and it has received considerable notice in the media.
 

Over the past 15 years, Jim has intensively researched a relatively unknown and unexplored corner of the organ repertoire: the music of Nordic countries. The series is called Nordic Journey and is now an ongoing endeavor. The series seeks to commission new works from some of the leading composers from northern Europe (over 65 commissioned works thus far), discover unpublished and, hitherto, unknown works from previous eras, highlight compositions that have never been recorded, as well as celebrating a few of the standard masterpieces of the Nordic school.