Organist, pianist, teacher of music, musical instrument maker, tuner, and repairer, composer, inventor, scientific instrument maker, shopkeeper, general retailer. Born Liverpool, England, 18 September ; baptised St. According to James himself death notice, Sydney, below , his father was a priest, and for a time a schoolmaster at Liverpool, and some of his former pupils were now in the colony. James and his wife, Eliza, and their infant daughter, arrived in Hobart Town in July , and the Van Diemen's Land government accounts for include an unspecified annual payment to "J.
Pearson, Conductor of Church Music". Notwithstanding, the Pearsons sailed from Hobart for Sydney on the Deveron early in March , and his first professional advertisement duly appeared in the Sydney press on 17 March:. They are taught the Rules of Modulation; the practical Use of the major and minor Keys, as connected with Modulation and the playing of Extempore Preludes; with the Method of adding to a Melody the proper Accompaniments, from a figured or thorough Bass.
Exercises in Outline are given to his Pupils, with appropriate Rules and Examples, to enable them to write on each Part of the Science, from its most simple to its highest Branches, and so to familiarize the whole, that they may attain a complete Knowledge of the theoretical as well as practical Part of Music.
It is Mr. Should this Attempt to forward the Progress of Musical Science in the Colony meet with Encouragement, it will be followed by others of a more extended Nature. Pearson notably came to the assistance of an Indigenous woman who was being assaulted by a group of whites in January By early March , he had taken over from John Edwards as leader of the choir at St.
James's Church though this was also the subject of some dispute in letters to the press , the Monitor reporting:. The choir of St.
