Born in 1944 in Chicago, he studied at the universities of Princeton (with Milton Babbitt and Cone Randall) and Brandeis (with Jonathan Berger), as well as at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (with Goffredo Petrassi). For several years he led an ensemble of contemporary music 'Forum Players' in Rome. At present he is the director of the Sciadoni Electronic Music Studio, and gives lectures and works as a composer at the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale at the University of Padova.
He composed his first computer pieces in Italy in the 1970s. Since 1986 he has worked exclusively with computers, having developed music30, a complete language for digital sound synthesis which integrates pitch and electronic sound. His articles have appeared in a wide range of periodicals including Perspectives of New Music, Computer Music Journal, Interface, and La Musica.
In the late 1980s he contributed a series of programmes on modern music for rai (Italian National Radio/Television).
His honours include grants and commissions from the Bourges Festival, the Guggenheim Foundation, 'Ars Electronica Linz', the Rockefeller Foundation, the Venice Biennale, the Fromm Foundation, RAI, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Library of us Congress, 'Musica Nova' in Prague, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Il Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte di Montepulciano, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Harvard Music Association (Boston). In 2000 he was awarded the 'Magisterium' Prize at the International Festival of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art in Bourges.
James Dashow lives in Rome. He is currently working on the opera Archimedes.

Selected works: Sul Filo dei Tramonti for soprano, piano and electronic sounds, poetry by Gian Giacomo Menon (1999-2000), ...at other times, the distances, quadrophonic electronic music (1999), Far Sounds, Broken Cries for 12 instruments and quadrophonic electronic sounds (1997-98), Personaggi ed Interpreti for flute, clarinet, violin and piano (1997), First Tangent to the Given Curve for piano and computer (1995-96), Media Survival Kit, a lyric satire in three parts for radio broadcast, for electrified voices and instruments, and electronic sounds (1995-96), Le Tracce di Kronos, i Passi for clarinet, dancer and computer (1995), A Sheaf of Times for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, harp and percussion (1992-94), Morfologie for trumpet player and computer (1993), Reconstructions for harp and computer (1992), Un primo frammento di Anti-Post-Neo-Romanticismo for solo clarinet (1991), 4/3 - Piano Trio (1989-90, rev. 1991), Ritorno a Delfi for alto flute and tape (1990), Disclosures for cello and computer (1988-89), Archimedes, scene II, computer music, from theater piece based on the life of Archimedes (1988), Oro, Argento & Legno for flute and computer (1987), Songs From a Spiral Tree for mezzo-soprano, flute and harp, to poems by Theodore Roethke (1984-86), Sequence Symbols, computer music (1984), In Winter Shine, computer music (1983), Mnemonics for violin solo and computer (1981-82; rev. 1984, computer part generated 1985), Conditional Assemblies, computer music (1980), Second Voyage for tenor with computer-generated electronic accompaniment, text: Voyage in the Blue by John Ashbery (1977-79), Partial Distances, electronic music (1978), Punti di Vista II: Montiano for piano solo (1977-78, rev. 1988), A Way of Staying for soprano with computer-generated electronic accompaniment, text: The Thief of Poetry by John Ashbery (1976-77), Punti di Vista I: Forte Belvedere for solo piano (1975-76), Effetti Collaterali for clarinet in A with computer generated electronic accompaniment (1976), Whispers Out of Time, electronic music (1975-76), At Delphi for soprano with electronic accompaniment (1975), Some Dream Songs for soprano, violin, piano (1974-75), Mappings for solo cello with electronic accompaniment (1974).

Reconstructions explores different levels of structure in the relationship between timbre and rhythm, their intertwinings via sounds generated by the computer and those of the harp. The work is particularly concerned with the overall musical shape produced by the accumulation of areas of high density energy and their discharging or dissolving, determined largely by timbral-rhythmic development and transformations.
The title is derived from a passage by Jean Piaget: 'Reconstructions involve increasingly varied combinations and a greater freedom in the kinds of combinations.' This describes particularly well both the musical conception and the compositional approach adopted by Dashow in this work.
Reconstructions was realized using the composer's music30 language for digital sound synthesis created for Texas Instruments dsp chip, the tms320c30 aboard a Sonitech International add-in accelerator board for pc, the Spirit-30.
The work was composed for harpist Lucia Bova, who has recorded it for the proviva label (Munich) and for neuma (Boston).