Richard Festinger's music has been performed throughout the United States, and in Europe and Asia. His works have been composed for numerous ensembles, including Parnassus, Earplay, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Alexander String Quartet, the City Winds, the Laurel Trio, the Left Coast Ensemble, the Alter Ego Ensemble, the Miroglio-Aprudo Duo, the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society, the Redwood Symphony Orchestra, and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. His music has been performed by Griffin, New Millennium Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, Phantom Arts, Composers Inc., the Empyrean Ensemble, the Sun String Quartet, the Alexander String Quartet, the Berkeley and Riverside Symphonies, sopranos Jane Manning, Patricia Green, Amy Burton, Alissa Deeter, and Karol Bennett, the Orchestra da Camera Italiana G.F. Ghedini, the Ensemble Italiano per la Musica Contemporanea, Ensemble Anti-Dogma, the Seoul, Korea Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music, and the Boston Chamber Ensemble.
Mr. Festinger’s works have been commissioned by the Jerome Foundation, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Barlow Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the Argosy Foundation, the Music Teachers National Association, the Hoff-Bartelson Music School, the Ross McKee Foundation, Volti, the Ringling College of Art and Design, and the American Composers Forum. He has received recording awards from the Aaron Copland Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, the American Composers Forum Subito Program, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He has been a resident artist at the Camargo Foundation, the Edward MacDowell Colony, Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ucross Foundation, the Liguria Study Center for Arts and Letters in Bogliasco, Italy, the Rockefeller Foundation Conference and Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, the Centre International d’Accueil et d’Échanges des Récollets in Paris, the Aaron Copland House, the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Bayern, Germany, and the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China. A recipient of the George Ladd Grand Prix de Paris, he has been a fellow at the Wellesley Composers Conference and the June in Buffalo Festival, Composer in Residence several times at the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, and has received both the Walter Hinrichsen Award and an Academy Recording Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Mr. Festinger earned a Ph.D. in composition at the University of California in Berkeley where he studied with Andrew Imbrie. Before turning to composing he led his own groups as a jazz performer, and later founded the acclaimed contemporary music ensemble Earplay. He has taught at the University of California in Berkeley and Davis, at Dartmouth College, and since 1990 has been a professor of music at San Francisco State University. His music is published by C.F. Peters, and recorded on the Bridge, Centaur, CRI and CRS labels. Bridge records has just released a new CD of his works in February of 2008, and another new CD of works performed by the New York New Music Ensemble is projected for release in 2010 on the Naxos label.