Biography
An admirer of Louis Andriessen’s compositional approach, Richard Baker also exerts strong influence as a conductor who actively promotes other living composers while serving as a dedicated teacher and guide to emerging musicians. Born in 1972 in Dudley, a town in England’s West Midlands near Birmingham, he sang as a boy in the Lichfield Cathedral Choir and acquired early musical grounding there. He studied at Exeter College, Oxford, then spent a year at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague on a Dutch government scholarship. Upon returning to England he completed a doctorate at Royal Holloway, University of London, under the supervision of John Woolrich. Beginning in 2001 he served as New Music Fellow at the Kettle’s Yard art gallery in Cambridge; from 2005 to 2007 he held the post of Director of Music at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, with the title of fellow-commoner. Attention as a composer arrived with Los Rábanos for B-flat clarinet, violin, and percussion (1998), a score repeatedly taken up by the Composers Ensemble, and with Learning to Fly (1999), a bass-clarinet concerto premiered by the London Sinfonietta and soloist Timothy Lines. Both as composer and conductor he has built close ties with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and other ensembles devoted to new music. In 2004 he led Germany’s MusikFabrik at the 2006 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; after assisting Thomas Adès on a production of Gerald Barry’s opera The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit in 2002, he has become a steady advocate for that composer. He has also collaborated with Joanna Bailie, Tansy Davies, Michael Zev Gordon, and additional contemporary voices. Baker has directed more established ensembles as well, among them the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and the Britten Sinfonia. Numerous of his own works appeared on the 2024 NMC release Richard Baker: The Tyranny of Fun. He is professor of composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
Albums
