James Richman

Artistic Director

James Richman, named Artistic Director of the Dallas Bach Society in 1995, is a prominent harpsichordist and fortepianist, as well as one of today’s leading conductors of Baroque music and opera.

The first musician since Leonard Bernstein to attend Harvard, Juilliard, and the Curtis Institute of Music, James Richman studied conducting with Max Rudolf and Herbert Blomstedt, piano with Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Rosina Lhevinne and Rudolf Serkin, and harpsichord with Albert Fuller and Kenneth Gilbert. He holds a degree in the History of Science magna cum laude from Harvard College. In 1988, Mr. Richman received a prestigious United States-France Exchange Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1995 was knighted by the French government in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his contributions to the field of music. James Richman has been a prizewinner in four international competitions for early keyboard instruments, including first prize in the Bodky Competition of the Cambridge Society of Early Music, laureate of the Bruges Harpsichord Competition and bronze medal in the Paris Harpsichord Competition of the Festival Estival and in the First International Fortepiano Competition (Paris).

As founder and director of New York’s Concert Royal, he has been a leading figure in the Baroque revival in the United States. In appearances at the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Spoleto Festival USA, the E. Nakamichi Baroque Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, as well as in regular series in New York, he has staged revivals of such important works as Gluck’s Orfeo, Handel’s Ariodante, Acis and Galatea, Il Pastor Fido and Terpsicore, Purcell’s King Arthur, Monteverdi’s Incoronazione di Poppea, J.C. Bach’s Amadis des Gaules, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Le Devin du Village, and seven operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau including Hippolyte et Aricie, Pygmalion, and Les Indes Galantes. Among his United States original instrument premieres were the 1978 performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, as well as the first Haydn Symphony and Mozart piano concerto done in this country. He has also performed with Music from Aston Magna, the Bermuda Festival, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, as well as with P.D.Q. Bach, and was a Participant at the Marlboro Music Festival.

His Concert Royal ensemble has performed annual concert series at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, the French Institute/Alliance Française, and other venues in New York City, as well as at Princeton University. The ensemble has been in residence at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York since 1982, performing chamber music concerts as well as the works of Handel, Bach and Purcell with the Choir of Men and Boys at St. Thomas. Mr. Richman has recorded for Nonesuch, Newport Classic, Vox and New World records, and his live performance of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #6 is featured on National Public Radio’s Bach CD, along with recordings of James Galway, Yo-Yo Ma and Christopher Hogwood.