Described by critics as "austere" and "sensuous" and "filled with a beautiful sadness," his music has been recorded on the Cold Blue, CRI, Advance, Grenadilla, Raptoria Caam, and Citadel labels and published in such new music anthologies as Soundings and Scores. His Cold Blue recording Last Things (CB0001) was chosen as a Record of the Year (2000) by the Italian music magazine Blow Up and The Wire magazine (UK) described it as "an ethereal experience." International Record Review wrote of it: "Fox’s music invites one to believe that if the stars, constellations and galaxies emitted sounds, these unearthly harmonics are what one might hear." John Schaefer, producer of WNYC’s New Sounds, described Fox’s second Cold Blue recording, The City the Wind Swept Away, as a "beautiful and evocative work," and e/i magazine described it as " captivating and truly refreshing." Of Fox's latest recording, Descansos, past, John Schaefer wrote that it has a "lush bleakness that evokes the windswept open spaces of the American West," and Frank J. Oteri, editor of the American Music Center's NewMusicBox, wrote, "Easily the most beautiful thing I heard all week ... haunting ... deep on so many levels ... you won't want to listen to anything for a while after you've heard this."

In the late 1970s, Fox briefly taught electronic music at the University of Redlands, and subsequently has visited universities across the U.S. as a guest composer. He co-edited, with Barney Childs and Elliot Schwartz , the second (expanded) edition of Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (DaCapo Press, 1998) and has edited many film-related books for Silman-James Press. He is the founder/director of the Cold Blue Music record label. He has designed the CD covers for most Cold Blue releases and a number of releases from other new music labels.

"One of the striking qualities of Jim Fox's compositions is that you can still hear them inside you long after the music is over." —Wadada Leo Smith

"Introverted, smart, not seduced by any fashion of the moment might describe the music of Jim Fox. A quiet music that is not made to grab your ear rudely. It is certainly a great American music, but one could also say a great 'Southern Californian' music. Such a term might bring to mind images of strip malls and billboards, but when I listen I think of the Inland Empire’s deserts, the Angeles National Forest, the Channel Islands." —Carl Stone

"This is music that sounds like it was made in California—not the California of celluloid freeway madness, but rather that California of cool northern beaches or the Mojave Desert as seen in the stark intimacy of Joshua Tree or even the remembered despair of the landscape around Donner Pass. This is a music of honesty, seductive and delicate yet strong and dark. In a way, Fox is a quintessential California composer in the lineage of Cowell, Rudhyar, and Harrison. Like theirs, his is music that could come only from the West." —Daniel Lentz

"Jim Fox is a fine composer with an appreciation for the glory of space and a tendency to teach notes how to swim in it," —Josef Woodard, Santa Barbara Independent

"La rebelión de los antioxidantes" interview with JIM FOX regarding Cold Blue and more (en Español)

Mark Alburger's interview with Fox from 21st-Century Music magazine

Cold Blue Music Website