Richard Carrick is a composer, pianist and conductor who writes music for soloists, chamber ensembles, orchestra, film, theatre, electronics and concert music with video. Described by Allan Kozinn of The New York Times as, “charming, with exoticism and sheer infectiousness” and Kyle Gann of The Village Voice as “clever… scintillating...engaging,” Carrick’s music draws inspiration from his French, North African, and UK roots, his studies in mathematics and philosophy, and his experience as performer of notated and improvised music. With the completion of his Flow Cycle, Richard's music has developed into a unique voice in US and European concert music. Richard has spent the past five years developing his musical ideas in New York, where he concurrently founded the Either/Or Music Ensemble to champion music rarely heard by the American Experimentalists, European avant-guard, and emerging composers.
His music has been performed at numerous international festivals, including the International Composer Festival in Serbia (2009), New York Philharmonic Ensembles Series (2008), MATA festival-New York (2008), Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (2006), ISCM World Music Days-Switzerland (2004), Either/Or Spring Festivals, Banff Centre for the Arts (2002), ISCM-Lange Nacht fur Neue Klang-Wien in Vienna’s Konzerthaus (1999), Royaumont Voix Nouvelles Festival (1997), Wellesley Composers Conference (1998), Haags Tumult Festival-Holland (1996), and the American Conservatory of Fontainebleau (1993).
His music has been performed in Viennas’ Konzerthaus, Los Angeles’ Japan-America Theatre, Japan’s International House of Tokyo, Leipzig’s Bahnhof, New York’s Merkin Hall, Miller Theatre, Austrian Cultural Forum, The Kitchen and more.
He has written new pieces for the Nieuw Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Arditti Quartet, Sequitur Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Wet Ink Ensemble, Either/Or Ensemble, Brown University, UC-San Diego, soloists Rohan de Saram, Carin Levine, Magnus Andersson, Ernest Rombout, Ernestine Stoop, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Alex Waterman, David Shively and Petra Ackermann. He has also been performed by the Auros Group for New Music, Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain-Switzerland, Ensemble-Online Wien, the Flinders Quartet-Melbourne, Harvey Sollberger, Steven Schick, Dov Scheindlin, and others.
Richard Carrick’s large scale multi-media work Cosmicomics (based on stories by Italo Calvino, with multiple video by Peter Nigrini) was commissioned and premiered by the Sequitur Ensemble of New York City in Merkin Hall in 2005.
Carrick is Founder, Artistic Co-Director and pianist for Either/Or, “a new and first-rate new-music ensemble” (Bernard Holland, The New York Times) that presents the yearly Either/Or Spring Festival, numerous concerts of newly penned works, and portrait festivals of Helmut Lachenmann (2008) and Chaya Czernowin (2010) in New York City.
As a pianist and conductor he has specialized in innovative contemporary music, with performances in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, at the Ijsbrekr-Amsterdam, the Kitchen-New York, and as soloist in Banff, Amsterdam, California and New York. He has also performed on marimba with Kyandu Muziki, a Mwambe dance music troupe in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and learned acoustic guitar to give the New York premiere of Helmut Lachenmann’s Salut für Caudwell. His score for Nancy Kiang’s film, Solidarity, received the Gold Medal for Excellence at the Park City Film Music Festival 2007. Carrick also receives regular commissions (Concertante, New York Philharmonic Education, etc) for arranging chamber music versions of classical orchestral repertoire.
Carrick is presently Adjunct Faculty at New York University, Visiting Artist at the New School, on the Composition Faculty at the Hoff-Barthelson Music School, where he is Director of Music Technology, and teaches with the New York Philharmonic Very Young Composers Program.
He studied Mathematics and Music (with David Rakowski and Mario Davidovsky) at Columbia University before receiving a scholarship to study with Brian Ferneyhough, Aleck Karis (piano) and George Lewis at UC-San Diego, where he received his PhD in 2001. He also studied at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague in 1995-96 with Diedrick Wagenaar and Richard Barrett and at the Stage d’Ete of Ircam in 2002.
For more information, please visit www.richardcarrick.com