Richard Edward Horner was born in St. Louis and began piano lessons at the age of 7. Immediately, he began plinking out John Williams by ear and improvising. Piano eventually gave way to guitar, which Richard spent an inordinate amount of time playing.
At the age of 18, Richard left St. Louis to attend the University of Washington in Seattle. Once there, he was admitted to their top 10 computer science program in which he studied computational theory, digital logic, hardware design and programming with Martin Dickey, Larry Snyder, Jason Hartline, Rimli Sengupta and Alon Halevy (formerly Alon Levy). Richard also studied computer music at the University of Washington.s Center for Advanced Research Technology in the Arts and Humanities (CARTAH) with Linda Antas.
Richard enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston at the age of 21. There he studied guitar with Jon Finn, Don Lappin and Joe Stump while studying composition with Jim Smith, Tom McGah, John Bavicchi and Yakov Gubanov. Richard graduated summa cum laude on his 23rd birthday.
Richard is currently residing in Boston, composing, studying and teaching music planning to attend graduate school beginning in Fall '05.