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Award winning conductor and composer Richard Prior’s musical training began in his native England where he received a BA with high honors from Leeds University and an AMusD degree in conducting and composition from Nottingham University. His performances have been reviewed in the professional press as having ‘stirring conviction,’ ‘precision’ and ‘stylishness and flexibility’ while another article noted the ‘meteoric rise’ of ensembles under his direction. Prior's principal teachers and mentors include Sir Simon Rattle, James Paul, William LaRue Jones, Robert Pascall and James Fulkerson. Previous faculty appointments include Oklahoma State University (OSU), Southeastern Louisiana University, Davidson College, Franklin & Marshall College and St. Catherine’s College (Oxford University), where he was the 1997 Visiting Fellow-in-Music. Currently, he serves as Director of Orchestral Studies at Emory University, where he conducts the Emory Symphony Orchestra and Emory Youth Symphony Orchestra; he is also Music Director and Conductor of the Rome Symphony, Georgia. Prior was a selected participant in the 2001 Pierre Boulez Professional Training Workshop at Carnegie Hall, NY and the 2002 Conductors’ Workshop of America. He was the recipient of the OSU 2003 Wise-Diggs-Berry Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence in the Arts and the 2004 Golden Torch Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Leadership and Service. In 2008, Prior won the Harvey Philips Award for Excellence in Composition, presented at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music for his work diversions. He is the 2009-2010 recipient of Emory University’s Winship Faculty Award. In demand as an adjudicator and clinician, Prior has conducted numerous honor orchestras (including the 2006 Delaware and 2008 Georgia 11-12th grade All-state orchestras) and at festivals and conventions. He has led a variety of professional consortiums from the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Atlanta Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra; guest appearances include concerts with the Charlotte Symphony, the New Orleans Civic Symphony, the Tulsa Signature Symphony, the Rome Symphony Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Ukraine, the Odessa Philharmonic and the Wilmington Community Orchestra, Delaware. He holds professional memberships in the American Symphony Orchestra League, the Conductors Guild, BMI, GMEA, MENC, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and Kappa Kappa Psi. Prior is a founding member and Past President of the College Orchestra Directors Association (CODA), South Central Division. Highly active as a composer, Prior’s orchestral, choral and chamber music has been performed, recorded and broadcast widely in Europe and North America with works featured at national conventions and international festivals. He was Composer-in-Residence for the 2003 Association for Music in International Schools Festival (AMIS) at The Hague in the Netherlands; his work for orchestra Cimarron Portrait was premiered at the 2003 Midwest Convention. The Concertino for Horn and Wind Ensemble was featured at the 2004 regional CBDNA conference in Atlanta with horn virtuoso Eric Ruske. The Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony premiered icarus at the 2005 Midwest Convention, a work subsequently selected for performance during the 2007 National Conference of CBDNA at the University of Michigan. Recent performances include The Darkening Land with the Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony and clarinet virtuoso Richard Stolzman and the Pulitzer-nominated choral-orchestral work Stabat Mater at Emory University, the subject of a PBS special scheduled to air in September, 2009. His string quartet intimations of immortality was premiered by the Vega String Quartet on Emory’s Flora Glenn Candler Concert Series. The Darkening Land has recently been selected as a featured work for the International Clarinet Association’s 2009 international convention in Oporto, Portugal.
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