Brad Richter Email & Phone Number

Brad Richter took an unusual path to his career as a composer, touring artist and co-founder of Lead Guitar, a not-for-profit that provides free arts education to thousands of young people across the US. Born in Enid, Oklahoma, Richter saved enough money mowing lawns to buy his first guitar at age 12. He was immediately hooked and poured his energy into teaching himself to play and compose. On his eighteenth birthday Brad left Enid for Los Angeles where he spent his days working as a landscaper, dishwasher and house painter while using every spare moment practicing. His first professional gig was at Whiskey-a-Go-Go, playing his own guitar compositions as an opening act for heavy metal bands. At nineteen Richter headed to Chicago where, with no formal music training, he won the American Conservatory of Music’s Presidential Scholarship. He later earned a Master’s Degree in guitar and composition from the Royal College of Music in London and became the first guitarist in that college’s history to win the Thomas Morherr Prize for voice accompaniment. On returning to the US he notched several competition wins, including the International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship and the International Composer’s Guild Competition. Brad’s legacy as a performer includes nearly one-thousand concerts in North America and Europe and innumerable appearances on NPR’s Performance Today. An avid collaborator, his long-term touring partners were cellist Viktor Uzur, with whom Brad recorded three critically acclaimed albums as the Richter Uzur Duo, and guitarist Carlos Bonell, his teacher at the Royal College of Music. A series of concerts as solo accompanist for the Grammy-winning Phoenix Chorale and composing Navigating Lake Bonneville, a concert-length work for choir, guitar, percussion, cello, soprano and narrator commissioned by Weber State University standout in terms of project-based collaborations. Broadway legend Ben Vereen and Grammy-winners the Pacifica Quartet and David Finckel are among those who have premiered his compositions and arrangements. In 2019 Richter’s performing career was cut short by issues resulting from Lyme disease - a development which, far from sapping his energy, has strengthened Brad’s resolve to create arts education opportunities for young people nationwide. Since its inception in 1999 when Brad penned the program’s curriculum, Lead Guitar has expanded from its base in Tucson to reach thousands of young people in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, and Oklahoma and earned the support of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Listed skills include Music, Teaching, Customer Service, Management, and 4 others.