Biography

In April 2022, Richard trained a young choir to perform with opera superstar Joyce DiDonato in her two five-star-reviewed Eden concerts at the Barbican Centre.

In 2012, he was invited by the British Council to be Artistic Director of World Voice. Over the first seven years of World Voice, he has trained children, young people, teachers and other music professionals in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Russia, India, Nepal, Senegal, Ethiopia, Palestine, Jordan, Morocco, Argentina, Chile and Hong Kong. In 2020, the World Voice programme was handed over to Sing Up, England’s national singing programme. An independent evaluation confirmed that it has already benefited 1.5 million children worldwide and trained many thousands of teachers. The evaluation refers to Richard’s “inspirational leadership”.

From 2008-2012, he was Artistic Director of Youth Music Voices, a national singing ensemble formed for the Cultural Olympiad. In the lead-up to the Olympics, Richard conducted them at the Royal Opera House, the Houses of Parliament, in Trafalgar Square as part of the River of Music and at WOMAD. In the final months of Youth Music Voices, Richard visited Brazil and Bulgaria, where he worked with singing students at the National Conservatory in Sofia.

While working in Islington as an adviser, Richard founded the renowned Islington Music Centre, now established as a fully independent organisation with charitable status. It has recently been renamed Music Centre London (MCL) to accommodate the opening of a second centre in Southwark; more centres are being planned. Choirs from the MCL have performed at nine BBC Promenade concerts and have made numerous television appearances. The work of the Centre was featured in the Channel 4 TV documentary Don’t Stop the Music as an example of excellence. Over the 30 years of its existence, MCL has trained many thousands of London children and young people and given them invaluable performing experience.

Richard also has an international reputation as a music project leader. From 1999-2001, he devised and led a ground breaking music education project in Croatia for the British Council based on Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Turn of the Tide. The final concert was broadcast across Europe by the European Broadcasting Union. He has also worked on projects in Portugal, Belgium, Ireland (with the King’s Singers), Macedonia and Germany, where he trained choirs for the first ever YEAH Festival. He works regularly for Sing Up and Music for Youth.

Richard worked twice with jazz legend Hugh Masekela on projects in London. For the BBC, he co-led and devised the first ever Out and About concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Brixton Academy, conducted by American composer and conductor John Adams, and was series consultant on Play It Again, a major six-part TV series for BBC One.