UPCOMING/RECENT EVENTS

• February, 2024 Peak Performances Production of Blind Injustice garners major national press and glowing reviews. 

• April 2023- Opera Fusion: New Works workshop of The Robeson Opera  at Cincinnati Opera

• Blind Injustice named by Opera News as one of 5 Best New Opera Recordings 2022

• February, 2021 Robeson/Moscow Zoom Libretto Workshop – Funded by The Mellon Foundation

• February, 2021 the “Live” Double CD/Album of the Blind Injustice world premiere is released by Fanfare Cincinnati.

• February, 2021- Paulette Haupt’s Premieres Production licenses the solo musical A Thousand Words Come to Mind along with musicals from other Inner Voices seasons.

• June 2020 – Robeson/Moscow libretto work begins with David Cote and Director/Dramaturg Robin Guarino.

• July 2019 – The Opera Blind Injustice premieres at Cincinnati Opera to a completely sold out run and national critical acclaim.

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BIO

Scott Davenport Richards is an award winning composer/librettist whose creative works reside at various addresses around the intersection of Jazz, Opera, and Musical Theatre. His most recent opera, Blind Injustice (with librettist David Cote) premiered with direction by Robin Guarino at Cincinnati Opera in 2019 to a sold out run and national critical acclaim. The live CD/Album was cited by Opera News as one of the 5 Best New Opera Recordings of 2022.

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He has recently completed commissions for The Public Theater; The Rumble of Myth (with Marcus Gardley) and the TONY Winning Signature Theatre (VA) The Break (with Michele Lowe). The New York City Opera has performed two Richards works as a part of its Vox Festival of new opera; A Star Across The Ocean - Paris 1965 featuring Tony Award Winner, Chuck Cooper and Charlie Crosses the Nation, An Opera in Jazz Idiom.  He was commissioned by Paulette Haupt, Artistic Director of The O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Musical Theatre Conference to compose A Thousand Words Come to Mind (with Michele Lowe) for the inaugural set of  her Inner Voices one-person musical monologue series.  Other musical theatre works include music for Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing (written with Deborah Brevoort directed by Molly Smith at Perseverance Theatre/produced by Stuart Ostrow in Houston), and the original score for A Christmas Story The Musical at Kansas City Rep.

 

His play-scores have been heard at resident theatres around the country including The Yale Rep, Alliance, Center Stage, Madison Rep, Powerhouse and New Federal.

 

Works for children include a number of commissions from Theatreworks U. S. A.; Corduroy (music, lyrics, orchestration),  Sundiata! The Lion King of Mali (music, lyrics, orchestration), Island of the Blue Dolphins (orchestrations) and Junie B. Jones (orchestrations.)

 

As an actor, Mr. Richards originated the role of Sylvester (the stuttering nephew who almost ruins the recording session) in the historic original Broadway production of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and assisted his father, Director Lloyd Richards in the origination and Broadway premieres of three other Wilson works.

 

A recipient of the Jonathan Larson, Frederick Loewe, Shen Family Foundation, Meet the Composer, and the NJ State Council on the Arts Composition Awards, he taught on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program from 1997-2009 and continues to regularly guest teach. He currently holds a position as Professor of Composition/Musical Theatre and Associate Director for Faculty at Montclair State University’s Cali School of Music and was recently named to the distinguished faculty of American Lyric Theatre's Composer Librettist Development Program.

 

Mr. Richards also serves on the Executive Committee of The TONY winning O'Neill Theatre Center's Board of Trustees, and as of today, he is hard at work finishing Robeson/Moscow with co-librettist David Cote. 

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M. F. A. New York University Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program

B. A. Yale University

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