Biography

If you are interested in performing, broadcasting, or recording Richard Brodhead's music, or would like more information, please contact him using the information below:

Richard Brodhead
E-mail: brodheadrichard@gmail.com

Richard C. Brodhead, Composer

Richard C. Brodhead was born in 1947 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA, where he heard his first compositions performed during his secondary school years. He earned his Bachelor’s degree as a Scholar of the House in music composition at Yale University, where he studied with Lawrence Moss and Bulent Arel, and completed his graduate study in composition at the University of Pennsylvania, where his principal teacher was Richard Wernick, a deep and enduring influence on his work.

Brodhead’s music has been praised as “wondrously sculpted and paced…. Brodhead never forgets the emotion” (Philadelphia Inquirer), and as “ an extended moment of intense contemplation, where meditative calm and emotional anguish merge” (World/CRI Records).  His compositions—works for symphony orchestra, vocal and choral music, chamber music for a variety of solo instruments and ensembles, and works for dance—have been presented by such organizations as the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Network for New Music, the Steinway Salon Series at Symphony Space, New Sounds Live! at Merkin Hall, Chamber Music Now!, and Hartt School of Music, and have been broadcast on NPR.  New World/CRI, BCM&D, and Navona have recorded his music.

Distinguished artists -- including pianists Charles Abramovic, Marcantonio Barone, and Clipper Erickson; cellists Scott Kluksdahl and Jason Calloway; the Lions Gate Trio; the Momenta Quartet, andPlay, guitarist Allen Krantz, flutist Edward Schultz, and lutenist Richard Stone -- have premiered Brodhead’s work.  His score for the modern dance ballet Crystallina, with choreography by Joellen Meglin and Kun-Yang Lin, was given its premiere in 2011 by Temple University as part of the first Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA).

A composer with a deep commitment to teaching, Brodhead taught theory and composition at the University of Pennsylvania, Moravian College, Haverford College, The New School of Music, and from 1986 through 2012 at Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, where he was a recipient of the Music and Dance Teaching Academy Award and the Christian and Mary Lindback Award for distinguished teaching.  At Temple he also served in a number of academic leadership roles, including Provost’s Fellow for the Arts, Director of Graduate Studies in Music, Associate Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs, and Acting Dean of the Boyer College.  Prior to teaching at Temple, Brodhead served as Dean of the New School of Music, and, as Acting President in 1985-86, played a principal role in formulating the merger of the New School with Temple’s Boyer College -- a merger that established an expanded instrumental ensemble training program within both the College and its Preparatory and Extension Division. 

In 2013, Richard Brodhead retired from full-time teaching; he now devotes himself to composition and to professional service as a board member of Network for New Music.