Richard Faria

Clarinetist Richard Faria pursues an active career as soloist, chamber musician, and educator. After joining the faculty of Ithaca College in 1996, he co-founded the new music group Ensemble X (A superb ensemble - The New Yorker) along with Pulitzer prize-winning composer Steven Stucky and colleagues from IC and Cornell University. They made recordings of chamber music by Steven Stucky (In Shadow, In Light, Albany Records, TROY 642) and by Scottish composer Judith Weir (The Consolations of Scholarship, Albany Records, TROY 803), which Gramophone magazine praised as “powerful, streetwise, colourful.”  The inaugural season featured Richard as soloist in John Adams clarinet concerto Gnarly Buttons. Other notable performances have been of Thomas Adès Catch, Op. 4 and Life Story, Op. 8, Stephen Hartke The Horse With the Lavender Eye, Magnus Lindberg Steamboat Bill, Jr. and American premieres of Anders Hillborg Tampere Raw and Matthias Ronnefeld Sextett, Op. 2.

Richard has been a participant in numerous summer festivals such as the Bard Music Festival of the Hamptons, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, Skaneateles Festival, and the Garth Newel Music Center in Warm Springs, VA. His chamber music experience includes collaborations with such diverse groups as the Zephyros, Sylvan, and Ithaca Wind Quintets, Atlantic, Ariadne, and Arianna String Quartets, Guild Trio, Mother Mallard, and as soloist with the Young Composer’s Collective and the North West Symphony. He has performed in Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, The Kitchen, Miller Theater, Spivey Hall, the Smithsonian Institution, as well as at the American Academies in Rome and Berlin.

A fervent advocate of new music, Richard has premiered works written for him by Roberto Sierra, Steven Burke, Joshua Kohl, James Matheson, David Borden, Yotam Haber, Diego Vega, Sean Shepherd and John Fitz Rodgers. His new solo CD, Roberto Sierra: Clarinet Works, is available on the Fleur de Son label. He gave the west coast premiere of the Sierra Clarinet Sonata dedicated to he and pianist Xak Bjerken, at the International Clarinet Fest 2007 in Vancouver, BC.

Richard is a contributing author to The Clarinet magazine and has also recorded for Newport Classic, Koch International Classics, and Mark Records. He studied at Ithaca College, Michigan State University, and SUNY Stony Brook, as well as the Aspen Music Festival, National Repertory Orchestra and the Stockhausen Courses Kürten. His teachers have included Michael Galván, Joaquin Valdepeñas, John McCaw, Georgina Dobrée, Dr. Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr and Charles Neidich.