Although retired in 2021 from his faculty position at the Yale School of Music and Director of Music at Saint Thomas More Chapel at Yale, Richard remains a lifelong musician and educator at heart. He enjoys accompanying and performing with ensembles more than solo work, and loves to create the “soundtrack” to whatever event or activity he plays for or conducts. 

 

Richard worked in commercial and pop music, performing with big and not so big bands and soloists in Los Angeles clubs and civic orchestras; in Connecticut he connected with the large arena and equity theaters as a contractor and conductor, and founded the Performing Arts Collaborative LLC to facilitate this work.  His groups have performed in theaters and arenas with 500 to 25,000 audience, including a sold-out choral concert on the main stage of Carnegie Hall with orchestra and 400 choristers from the US, Britain, and Finland in 2016.

 

In 2012 Richard joined the The Way of H Inc., to consult on the development of his ideas into online music teaching systems: Rock Prodigy, Choir Prodigy, Music Prodigy, All-state Choir Prep, and SongBird.  School choir members have since practiced more than 1 million hours learning to sight sing in his apps, and guitarists played more than 1 million hours.

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In 2016 Richard designed and published the online Cloud Hymnal.  Cloud Hymnal offers a free library for non-profit use, and also hosts subscription music from other sacred music publishers in an easily searched which also creates liturgy or set lists. Cloud Hymnal accepts user submissions of sacred music and the library grows by several hundred works each year. As of June 2023, there have been more than 500,000 free downloads of shared music. 

 

Richard has been interested in music technology since its inception. In1976 he built a Moog III synthesizer with Dr. Hank Keating in Los Angeles.  Recordings were made on 1” Tascan tape machines, Tascam and Neve boards, Maestro Echo-plex, magnetic tape loops on mic stands.  Richard performed and recorded with the first products by Echoplex, Moog, ARP, Sequential, Buchla, Alesis, Electro-harmonix, Oberheim, Synclavier, Emu, Kurzweil, String Ensemble, Yamaha DX, and Mellotron.  

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An editor and arranger for three choral music publishers, Richard’s SATB arrangement of Debussy’s “Beau soir” was in print for 29 years, and his 22 English settings of Norwegian and Swedish hymns was popular in Augsburg collections and hymnals.

 

Before joining the faculty at Yale University School of Music, Richard was on the faculty of Naugatuck Valley Community College, Connecticut, Gateway Community College, Connecticut, Cypress College, California, and Newbridge High School, California.

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From age 5, Richard has devoted much of his talent to liturgical music and has served as music director at multiple churches throughout his career, culminating in his 22 years at Saint Thomas More Chapel at Yale, of which he is most proud. 

 

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