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Richard Prior's musical training began in his native England, where he received a BA with high honors from Leeds University and an AMusD degree in conducting and composition from Nottingham University. His performances have been reviewed in the professional press as having 'stirring conviction,' 'precision' and 'stylishness and flexibility' while another article cited the 'meteoric rise' of ensembles under his direction. Dr. Prior's principal teachers and mentors include Sir Simon Rattle, James Paul, William LaRue Jones, Robert Pascall and James Fulkerson. He holds professional memberships in the American Symphony Orchestra League, the Conductors Guild, BMI, GMEA, MENC, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and Kappa Kappa Psi. Prior is a founding member and Past President of the College Orchestra Directors Association (CODA), South Central Division. Currently, Dr. Prior serves as Director of Orchestral Studies at Emory University, where he conducts the Emory Symphony Orchestra and Emory Youth Symphony Orchestra. Previous faculty appointments include Oklahoma State University, Southeastern Louisiana University, Davidson College, Franklin & Marshall College and St. Catherine's College (Oxford University), where he was the 1997 Visiting Fellow-in-Music. Prior was a selected participant in the 2001 Pierre Boulez Professional Training Workshop at Carnegie Hall, NY and the 2002 Conductors' Workshop of America; he was the recipient of the OSU 2003 Wise-Diggs-Berry Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence in the Arts and the 2004 Golden Torch Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Leadership and Service. In demand as an adjudicator and clinician, Prior has conducted numerous honor orchestras and at festivals and conventions, including the Midwest Convention in Chicago. Guest appearances include concerts with the Charlotte Symphony, the New Orleans Civic Symphony, and the Tulsa Signature Symphony. He has also conducted a variety of professional consortiums from the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Atlanta Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra. Most recently, he served as conductor of the 2006 Delaware All-State Orchestra and the Fulton County and District III Honor Orchestras in GA. This season, Prior will conduct at the 2007 Midwest Convention, serve as guest conductor with the Rome Symphony Orchestra, the District XII Honor Orchestra (GA) and conduct the 2008 Georgia All-state 11-12th grade orchestra. Highly active as a composer, Prior's orchestral, choral and chamber music has been performed, recorded and broadcast widely in Europe and North America with works featured at national conventions and international festivals. He was Composer-in-Residence for the 2003 Association for Music in International Schools Festival (AMIS) at The Hague in the Netherlands; his work for orchestra Cimarron Portrait was premiered at the 2003 Midwest Convention and the Concertino for Horn and Wind Ensemble was featured at the 2004 regional CBDNA conference in Atlanta with horn virtuoso Eric Ruske. The Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony premiered icarus at the 2005 Midwest Convention, a work subsequently selected for performance during the 2007 National Conference of CBDNA at the University of Michigan. Upcoming performances include the premiere of his string quartet vortex with the Vega and Serafin String Quartets, The Darkening Land (2004) with the Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony and clarinet virtuoso Richard Stolzman and the Pulitzer-nominated choral-orchestral work Stabat Mater (2000) at Emory University.
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