To those who think they’re too old to build a career doing what they really love, harpsichordist James Nicolson enthusiastically offered his life as an example that it’s never too late.
He was 4 when he began taking piano lessons, but to his parents and their generation, music was not “a career. It was a social grace,” he said in a 2021 interview for an Early Music America publication.
After studying physical sciences at Harvard College and flunking out — “not once but twice,” he later wrote — Mr. Nicolson spent years seeking his true path. He worked as a laboratory assistant at Woods Hole and in audio engineering sales in Cambridge before a harpsichord concert inspired him to change his life.
At 31, he enrolled as a New England Conservatory student. And at 52, as he was becoming a key part of Boston’s early music scene, he launched his first solo tour of venues in Germany. “I was just a late bloomer,” he said in the 2021 interview.
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Mr. Nicolson, a former president of the Cambridge Society for Early Music, a founder of the Boston Early Music Festival, and a harpsichord teacher well into his 80s, died June 4 in Sawtelle Family Hospice House in Reading. He was 90 and was living in Arlington, after many years in Belmont.
“Jim was a remarkable individual, incredibly devoted to our field,” said Kathy Fay, executive director of the Boston Early Music Festival. “Not only was he a gifted artist, he was a consummate gentleman — one of the nicest individuals I’ve ever met.”
Whether he was onstage speaking to audiences or offstage spending time with friends, “he liked to take care in using the right vocabulary, the best phrasing, and recognizing the sensibilities of other people,” said his wife, Christina.
She added that “he had courtly manners — without impressing them on people.” Indeed, during some tours and vacations, “we went around the country visiting friends on a motorcycle,” sometimes while towing his harpsichord case in a trailer.
Mr. Nicolson “loved other cultures, she said. “He was so eager to know about things, like their musical lives. He just always connected with other cultures through the study of their music.”
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In 2013, the Early Music America organization, based in Pittsburgh, honored his lifetime of musical achievement with its Howard Mayer Brown Award, named for the late University of Chicago Renaissance music scholar.
Among top harpsichordists in the world, Mr. Nicolson was well known for his friendship, trusted for his musical and technical expertise, and turned to for his generosity.
“Whenever I needed a harpsichord, or some help with mine, Jim was the person I called,” Mark Kroll, a renowned harpsichordist who has performed worldwide and taught at Boston University and elsewhere, wrote in a tribute on the Early Music America website.
“Since I was the harpsichordist for the Boston Symphony,” Kroll wrote, “I always made sure Jim was the only person to call to tune or maintain the harpsichords for rehearsals and concerts.”
In an Instagram post, the Boston Camerata early music ensemble called Mr. Nicolson “one of Boston’s early music pioneers: musician, impresario, and one of the first participants in Camerata concerts.”
Mr. Nicolson’s “benevolent, welcoming presence in our community was a constant boon to the music we love, and to its participants,” the organization wrote.
James Shelley Nicolson was born in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 11, 1933, the only child of Jamaican immigrants.
His father, Dr. Joseph Henry Nicolson, was a dentist who also taught at Howard University College of Dentistry. His mother, Elma Louise Shelley Nicolson, had worked at the US Treasury in data collection and created an intellectual salon at home, inviting women to dinner and other gatherings to discuss issues facing Black Americans.
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Beginning his piano studies at 4, Mr. Nicholson went on to take lessons at Howard University’s Junior School of Music.
But even though his parents asked him to perform on piano for guests, “my father, whom I respected enormously, considered me to be less than wise to choose a career in music,” he told harpsichordist Leslie Kwan in the Early Music America interview.
“He let me know how he felt in no uncertain terms,” Mr. Nicolson recalled. “So I had to get to a point where there was absolutely no other possibility for me except to go after music, whatever the rewards or lack of rewards would be.”
Mr. Nicholson was 14 when his mother died. After graduating from high school, he entered Harvard College as part of the class of 1954, and he kept contributing occasional entries to the Harvard class reports that are published every five years, even after leaving the university.
His second departure from Harvard “made it clear to me that my progress through life was not going to be easy and direct,” he wrote for the 50th annual report of his class. In the years ahead, he would turn to Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” as a defining theme.
At Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, he was a laboratory assistant helping study and measure waves and their impact. He also began taking piano lessons again, this time with the organist at a local Episcopal church.
Moving to Cambridge, he took night engineering classes at Northeastern University and worked as a purchasing agent and in sales for a pair of research firms.
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Then one day a harpsichord performance in Cambridge by Helen Keaney led him to enroll at New England Conservatory, where he studied harpsichord with her and graduated with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s.
“I was just blown away by her playing — so full of life, vitality, and color,” he told Early Music America. “I was deeply moved. And I thought, ‘That’s the instrument I want to study.’ "
Though much of his performing took him to Germany and the rest of Europe, “the Boston area for the last four decades has been the center and wellspring of the now worldwide interest in the flourishing early-music phenomenon,” he wrote for his 50th Harvard class report.
He taught in Greater Boston for years, mostly at Longy School of Music in Cambridge, and also at Northeastern University and Powers Music School in Belmont.
In the mid-1970s he met Christina Carrell when both were part of a concert. They married in 1977, writing their own service, which was held at the Follen Unitarian Universalist Church in Lexington.
As she taught for many years and designed enrichment courses for students, “Jim supported all my adventures,” said Christina, who is his only immediate survivor. “He was a guiding light, really.”
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday in Follen Church in Lexington.
Through leadership roles with the Cambridge Society for Early Music and the Boston Early Music Festival, Mr. Nicolson “had a very, very deep impact, and I feel very blessed to have known him,” said Fay, the festival’s executive director.
“I think he was particularly interested in lifting up the careers of local artists,” she added — particularly those who were lesser known or from underserved communities.
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“He made you believe in yourself as a young Boston musician trying to make an impact in this world,” Fay said, “and he impacted many lives in this way.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.