Richard Festinger

Richard Festinger (born 1 March 1948) is an American composer of contemporary classical music, pianist and educator.

Festinger was born in Newton, Massachusetts.

He received his B.A. in music, magna cum laude, from San Francisco State University, and his Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley.

He was the founding director of Earplay, a new chamber music ensemble based in the Bay Area.

He has been a resident artist at the MacDowell Colony, Camargo Foundation, Cité internationale des arts in Paris, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study Center, the Ligurian Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy, Fundación Valparaíso, Mojácar, Almeria, Spain, Ucross Foundation Centre International d’Accueil et d’Échanges des Récollets, the Aaron Copland House, the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, and the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

Returning to San Francisco in 1972 he performed extensively for several years as a jazz guitarist while pursuing a growing interest in classical music and composition.

Festinger earned his B.A. from San Francisco State and later his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley where he worked with Andrew Imbrie.

Festinger is Professor of Theory and Composition at San Francisco State University, where he is also the artistic director of the Morrison Artists Chamber Music Series.

He was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation in 2003 to compose his work Hidden Spring for the Cygnus Ensemble.

Also in 2003 Works and Process at the Guggenheim commissioned and premiered his settings of poet/author Denis Johnson, The Coming of Age with Amy Burton, soprano and The Group for Contemporary Music conducted by Bradley Lubman.

In 2009 pianist Marilyn Nonken toured with Festinger's large scale piano solo, Le Pianiste.

Early in his career Festinger played guitar and toured with folk singer Joan Baez including a performance at Woodstock.

Shortly afterwards, intent on pursuing a performing career in jazz, he attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he studied composition with Herb Pomeroy and improvisation with Gary Burton.