Richard Chew is a composer, singer, pianist and conductor. Born in the UK, he studied at The University of Birmingham and attained his Masters Degree at the Royal College of Music in London, where he was also awarded The President’s Rose Bowl, by HM The Queen Mother.

 Richard studied composition with Peter Sculthorpe and Louis Andriessen. His works include 4 operas, and several large-scale works for orchestra and chorus. He has received commissions from English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, The Lindsay Quartet, The Three Choirs Festival, The Norfolk and Norwich Festival, The Vienna Festival and Festival of Arts and Ideas in Connecticut, USA. His music has been performed and broadcast widely in the UK, Europe and the USA, notably at the Chor Biennale in Amsterdam, The New Victory Theatre on Broadway and The Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, National Portrait Gallery, Barbican Centre and Royal Festival Hall in London.

Richard is widely known in the UK for his work with schools and communities, introducing opera to children and creating large-scale music theatre events with major orchestras and the communities they serve. He has devised several new works for people identifying with a disability, and communities suffering disadvantage. His music for the film Through Listening Eyes for Welsh National Opera was recently awarded first prize in the Picture This Festival in Calgary, Canada and was also shown at film festivals in Dieppe, France and Victoria, Australia.

Richard has devised a new program for Opera Education and Outreach for the State Opera of South Australia in partnership with The Friends of State Opera and UniSA. There have been two Sixty-Minute Opera productions so far, Madam Butterfly (2006) and The Barber of Seville (2007). A new version of Verdi’s Rigoletto is planned for 2008.

Richard moved to Adelaide with his family in 2005, and is currently Chair of the CCD Performing Arts Peer Assessment Panel at Arts SA and a lecturer in Music at UniSA, where he is researching for his PhD.

Richard will return to the UK to oversee a performance of his choral work Stari Most, at Salisbury Cathedral in October 2008.

 In 2009, Richard’s choral-theatre piece The Shouting Fence, will receive a new production in the Adelaide Festival Fringe with the Tutti Ensemble and State Opera of South Australia. Current commissions include a new work Men who march away, for Concordia College choir and orchestra, a song-book for Sheffield, UK, commissioned by Music-in-the-Round and a large-scale piece for the opening of a new concert hall in central London, commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music.