Clarinetist Richard Faria pursues an active career as soloist, chamber musician, and educator. He has been a participant in such festivals as the Bard Music Festival of the Hamptons, Skaneateles Festival, and the Garth Newel Music Festival, and has collaborated with the Zephyros and Sylvan Wind Quintets, Atlantic and Arianna String Quartets. He has performed in Weill Hall, Carnegie Hall, Spivey Hall, the Smithsonian Institution, as well as at the American Academies in Rome and Berlin, the Temple of Apollo in Turkey, and Glinka Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia.
He co-founded the new music group Ensemble X along with Pulitzer prize-winning composer Steven Stucky and colleagues from IC and Cornell University. Together they made recordings of chamber music by Steven Stucky and Scottish composer Judith Weir. The inaugural season featured Richard as soloist in John Adams clarinet concerto Gnarly Buttons.
A fervent advocate of new music, Richard premiered the Clarinet Sonata by Roberto Sierra at the International Clarinet Fest 2007 in Vancouver, BC. His first solo CD, Roberto Sierra: Clarinet Works, was described as “a superb recording that belongs on every clarinetist’s shelf” by the American Record Guide. His newest recording of Stephen Hartke’s The Horse with the Lavender Eye was released by Chandos.
Richard is a contributing author to The Clarinet magazine, and studied at Ithaca College, Michigan State University, and SUNY Stony Brook, as well as the Aspen Music Festival, National Repertory Orchestra and the Stockhausen Courses Kürten. His teachers have included Joaquin Valdepeñas, Dr. Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr and Charles Neidich.