Lucas Richman
LUCAS RICHMAN has been Music Director and Conductor for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra since 2003. Richman has appeared as guest conductor with numerous orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the Delaware Symphony, the San Antonio Symphony, Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra, the SWR Radio Orchestra of Kaiserslautern (Germany), the Tiroler Kammerorchester InnStrumenti (Austria), and the Zagreb Philharmonic (Croatia). Richman served as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's Assistant and Resident Conductor between 1998 and 2004 and, from 1988 to 1991, he was the Assistant Conductor for the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. In recent years, he has conducted for notable soloists such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Garrick Ohlsson, Frank Peter Zimmerman, Gil Shaham, Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, André Watts, and Radu Lupu.
Richman received a Master of Music in orchestral conducting from the University of Southern California, where he was a student of Daniel Lewis. He studied privately with Fritz Zweig and Victor Yampolsky, and was also selected as a conducting fellow in master classes with Pierre Boulez, André Previn, Herbert Blomstedt, and Kurt Sanderling. Earlier in his musical journey, he toured with West Germany's Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, for which he was one of four conductors from around the world selected by Leonard Bernstein to share the maestro's podium for concerts presented in London and Moscow. Over the past decade, Richman collaborated with numerous film composers as their conductor, recording scores for such films as the Academy Award-nominated The Village (with violinist Hilary Hahn), As Good As It Gets, Face/Off, Seven, Breakdown, and The Manchurian Candidate.
Richman is a respected leader in the field of planning and conducting concerts for young people, having done so for nearly 20 years with various orchestras across the United States. As a composer, Richman has had his music performed by over two hundred orchestras in the last ten years, and his works written specifically for children have been featured in young people's concerts presented by orchestras such as the Atlanta Symphony, the San Diego Symphony, and the San Antonio Symphony.
Commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony, his Concerto for Oboe was premiered in February 2006 (Cynthia DeAlmeida, oboe; Andrew Davis, conductor), and the Knoxville Symphony presented his Concerto for Percussion in March 2006 (Timothy Adams, percussion). Richman's choral work, Arise Triumphant, O Blessed Muse!, was premiered in January 2005, with Frederica von Stade as the soloist. Recent recordings of Richman's music include those made by Giora Feidman (Variations for Clarinet and Cello) and the Tiroler Kammerorchester InnStrumenti of Innsbruck (The Seven Circles of Life); the KSO's recording of his song for breast-cancer awareness ("We Share A Bond") is available for download at www.komenknoxville.org. A new compact disc, Day Is Done, features original and traditional lullabies composed and arranged by Richman as an aid for parents wishing to introduce their children to the joys of music. The CD, a companion children's book, and a listing of Richman's compositions can be found through LeDor Group, Inc. at www.ledorgroup.com.