The New York Baroque Dance Co.

James Richman is Artistic Director/Conductor of Concert Royal and the Dallas Bach Society.  He 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 graduate 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.  A recipient of the prestigious United States-France Exchange Fellowship from the NEA, he was knighted by the French government in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995 in recognition of his contributions to the field of music. 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).  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 organized revivals of such important works as Gluck’s Orfeo, Handel’s Ariodante, Alessandro, 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.

Recent recordings by Concert Royal on Centaur Records include Handel’s Terpsichore; Rameau’s Pygmalion & L’Impatience, and Rameau’s Zephyre & Clerambault’s Triomphe de la Paix.

A  frequent collaborator with The NYBDC, Concert Royal was founded in 1974 by Artistic Director James Richman, a recognized leader in the early music field. Performing the music of the 17th and 18th centuries exclusively on original instruments, Concert Royal presents a multifaceted approach to the period by programming all genres of music from orchestral, vocal and chamber music to opera and opera-ballet. The ensemble has been at the forefront of the Baroque and Classical revival in the United States, with innovative performances of the major repertoire of the period featuring the foremost performer/scholars in the field. This work has included the only ongoing program of Baroque opera on original instruments with period costumes and staging, as well as premieres from the chamber music and chamber orchestra repertoire.

The ensemble has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Mostly Mozart Festival, the E. Nakamichi Baroque Festival, and Spoleto Festival USA, Bermuda Festival, and the Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, among others, and tours regularly with the New York Baroque Dance Company. Together they have appeared across the United States and at major cities around the world. Concert Royal has presented regular orchestral seasons since 1989 in New York City at Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, and at the Alliance Française, with its unique Soirées Baroque series of French Baroque music. The ensemble is in residence at St. Thomas Church in New York City, performing Messiah and the works of Bach, Purcell and others annually with the Choir of Men and Boys of St. Thomas.

email: jamesrichman@sbcglobal.net