Artist of the Month

Click here to return to directory of artists.

---

December 2004: Richard Prior

New Emory Symphony Orchestra Conductor, Richard Prior, Prepares Dec. 7 Program Featuring British Composers

Richard Prior and the Emory Symphony Orchestra will present their second performance of the season on Tuesday, December 7, 2004. (8:00 p.m., free, Schwartz Center) Prior recently joined the Emory Music Department faculty as director of Orchestral Studies and the coordinator of chamber music programs.

An energetic and witty Englishman, Prior is also a visual artist, especially gifted in graphic design and painting. Hanging on the walls of his office are striking performance posters featuring his designs and his abstract watercolor compositions. Prior’s wife, Holloway Sparks, Ph.D., is a political scientist on the faculty of the Women’s Studies Department at Emory.

Prior’s conducting of professional and student orchestras over the course of fifteen years has crystallized his belief that the true star of a concert is not the conductor, but the orchestra. “Audiences used to view orchestra performances as a mass of people with instruments being led by a heroic figure standing there flapping his arms,” says Prior. “In fact, decades ago, many conductors would rest their success on the strength of their egos and had reputations as being tyrannical. Most conductors today recognize that the musicians they stand before collectively offer hundreds of years of musical training—certainly more than the single individual leading them,” he says emphatically. “Even at 18 years old, our musicians have on average five to ten years of training.” With 80 to 85 students in the symphony, that amounts to quite an impressive number.

Prior and the Emory Symphony Orchestra will have the opportunity to display their remarkable talents when they present celebrated works by twentieth-century English composers, including William Walton's energetic Spitfire Prelude and Fugue, Ralph Vaughan Williams's Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus for string orchestra, and Sir Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations.

Also an award-winning composer, Prior received his B.A. from Leeds University and his D.M.A. in conducting and composition from Nottingham University, where he was principal conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra, the Nottingham Philharmonia, and director of the University Chamber Choir. He made his American conducting debut with the Charlotte Symphony in 1995.

Prior says that he came to Emory for a number of reasons. “I have taught at both small liberal arts colleges and large state universities. Emory offers the best of both worlds. It’s not so small that we lack resources for innovative and exciting work, nor so huge that the students become faceless,” he explains.

He points to the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts as an additional enticement, calling it a “glorious new performing space.” “The facility reflects the gifts and the talents of the faculty that were already here,” says Prior, “and it also reflects the huge investment that the University and the community have made in order to put the performing arts on the map.”

Back to Top

---