Richard Lavenda is a composer.

He writes music that ranges from boldly dramatic to poignantly lyrical.

Richard Lavenda’s clearly audible motives, imaginative use of instrumental color, counterpoint, and harmony, and his powerful rhythmic energy combine to create music that is emotionally expressive, formally coherent, and that synthesizes his many influences and role models: most obviously classical and modern concert music, but also mid-20th century jazz, the rock and roll he grew up with, and, most recently, Ladino melodies and South American dances. His catalog of over eighty works extends from music for solo flute to an opera, and includes many pieces for orchestra and for a wide diversity of chamber ensembles. 

He has been a featured composer on many concert series, festivals, and campuses across the United States, with performances at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, and in Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Slovenia, Israel, South Korea, and Australia. It has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by such ensembles as the Houston Symphony Orchestra, Musica Nova/Tel Aviv, the Slovak Radio Orchestra, the Diotima, Chiara, Enso, T'Ang, and Sun String Quartets, the Apollo Chamber Players, ROCO, Project Trio, the Oasis Saxophone Quartet, Deviant Septet, ZAWA!, the Concordia Trio, the Pacific Trio, Trio Con Brio, and the New Israeli Vocal Ensemble. 

Lavenda has received commissions and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Houston Arts Alliance, the Vaughn Family Foundation, the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, Da Camera, the Miazawa Flute Company, the National Opera Association, the Boniuk Institute for Religious Studies, the Evelyn Rubinstein Jewish Community Center Foundation, and Jade Presents + The Arts Partnership and the Lake Region Arts Council of Minnesota, among many others.

Chiaroscuro, a CD that includes five of his chamber ensemble pieces, was released on Ravello Recordings 7881, and other works can be heard on recordings made by various soloists and ensembles. 

A native of New Jersey, Lavenda received degrees from Dartmouth College, Rice University, and the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University in 1987, where he is Professor of Composition and Theory and Director of Graduate Studies. 

PIANO TRIO

Recorded by the Galan Trio on their CD “Kinesis, Volume 2”, Neuma Recordings

https://www.galantrio.com/

CHIAROSCURO

Chamber Music by Richard Lavenda

“This is a must-have disc for those who appreciate serious, complex, nuanced, dynamic and varied post-tonal concert music. It is uncompromising in its tonal language, but never fails to be engaging, and, even, perhaps, outright entertaining.”

Robert Gross, Progressive Difference