Since 1997 James Bagwell has been Music Director of the May Festival Youth Chorus in Cincinnati, conducting regularly during the May Festival, Carolfest, and outreach concerts throughout the Cincinnati area. For eight years, he prepared the May Festival Summer Chorus for the Riverbend Music Series, and for two seasons worked with Robert Porco as his assistant for the May Festival Chorus. The chorus was recently featured on NPR's From the Top. In addition to his work with the Youth Chorus, he prepared the May Festival Summer Chorus for eight seasons for the Riverbend Summer Festival.

Mr. Bagwell maintains an active schedule throughout the United States as a choral, operatic, and orchestral conductor. Mr. Bagwell is the Music Director of the Collegiate Chorale in New York City. He has been Music Director of the Dessoff Choirs in New York City since 2005 and Director of Choruses for the Bard Music Festival since 2003, conducting and preparing choral works during the summer festival at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard and at Alice Tully Hall in New York. In summer 2005 he led six sold-out performances of Copland's The Tender Land as part of the Bard Summerscape Festival, which received unanimous praise from The New York Times,The New Yorker, and Opera News. He returned to Summerscape conducting three Offenbach operettas, and in 2007 he led a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer. Since 2001 he has conducted numerous concerts with the Bard Festival Chorale and the Bard Chamber Players. In December 2006 Mr. Bagwell made his major orchestra debut leading the Jerusalem Symphony in two concerts in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and in March 2007 he led a subscription concert with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, in addition to two concerts with the TSO in October. Now in his tenth season as Music Director of Light Opera Oklahoma, he conducted three new productions for the 2007 summer festival season, including Sweeney Todd. In 2005 and 2006 the company appeared under his direction at the OK Mozart International Music Festival in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. In October 2002 he premiered Cinderella's Bad Magic by microtonal composer Kyle Gann in Moscow as part of the central-European Festival Alternativa.

Since 2004 Maestro Bagwell has prepared The Concert Chorale of New York for concerts with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Mostly Mozart Festival (broadcast nationally in 2006 on Live from Lincoln Center), all in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. Mr. Bagwell has trained choruses for a number of major American and international orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, NHK Symphony (Japan), St. Petersburg Symphony, The American Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He has worked with noted conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Louis Langrée, Leon Botstein, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Raymond Leppard, James Conlon, Christof Perick, Jesús López-Cobos, Erich Kunzel, Leon Fleischer, and Robert Shaw.

Maestro Bagwell is artistic director for The New York Repertory Singers, and serves as conductor for the Berkshire Bach Society Choruses. From 1998-2001 he was Artistic Director and Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir and the Indianapolis Chamber Singers, a professional ensemble he formed in 1999. In 2000 he joined the faculty of Bard College where he is Director of the Music Program.