Richard Rosenberg, artistic director, conductor & co-founder of the National Music Festival, is one of a handful of American conductors whose experience ranges from contemporary music to historical performance practice. Under his baton, Richard’s editions of music by the 19th-century Louisiana composers Edmond Dédé, Louis Moreau Gottschalk Lucién Lambert, and Jerome Moross, are available on the Naxos/Marco Polo label as well as his best-selling recording of jazz-inspired concerti including premieres of music by George Gershwin, James Price Johnson, Harry Reser and Dana Suesse.

Richard has guest conducted the Academy of London, Ann Arbor Symphony, Ars Musica Baroque, Austin Symphony, Ballet Austin, Bangor Symphony, Orkestra Academic Başkent, Bremerton Symphony, Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Charlotte Symphony, Classical Band (in Schleswig-Holstein with Arlene Auger), Detroit Symphony, Dubrovnik Symphony, Dubuque Symphony, Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra, Gulf Coast Symphony, Houston Symphony, Juneau Symphony, Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra, League/ISCM at Carnegie Hall, Las Vegas Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Miami City Ballet, Mid-Texas Symphony, Naples Philharmonic, Oberlin Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Bahía Blanca, Orquesta Sinfónica de Mar del Plata, Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre,Festival Música nas Montanhas, Pensacola Symphony, Pro Musica Nipponia, Rapides Symphony; Rochester Philharmonic, Sacramento Symphony, Santa Fe Stages, Southeastern Wind Symphony, Smetana Philharmonic; Orchestra Sinfonica della Fondazione “Tito Schipa” di Lecce, I Musici di Praha, Kärntner Symphony, Orquesta Filarmonica de Montevideo, Symphonischen Akademie Patentorchester München, Torun Symphony, Vancouver Island Symphony,  and Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de Caracas in Venezuela. His recent engagements include concerts with the Krakow Philharmonic, Muzička akademija Zagreb, Orquestra de Câmara de Cascais e Oeiras, and the Orquestra de Camara Eleazar de Carvalho.

Richard’s experience includes study with composers Mario Davidovsky, Krzysztof Penderecki and Carlos Surinach; clarinet with Gervase De Peyer and Georg Hirner; theory with Charles Burkhardt, George Perle, and Carl Schacter; opera staging with Roger Brunyate and Boris Goldovsky; choral conducting with Margaret Hillis, Robert Page, Robert Shaw and Elmer Thomas, and apprenticeships/assistantships with Leonard Bernstein (New York Philharmonic), Sergiu Celibidache (Munich Philharmonic), Friedrich Cerha, Günther Herbig, Julius Herford, Eugen Jochum, Danny Kaye, Carlos Kleiber, Giuseppe Patané, Wolfgang Sawallisch (Bavarian State Opera), Jerzy Semkow, and David Zinman. He was an active participant in master classes with Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, Jussi Jalas, Lorin Maazel, Julius Rudel, Sir Georg Solti, and Walter Weller.

Earlier in his career, Richard was for fifteen years the Artistic Director of the Hot Springs Music Festival, Chamber Orchestra of California in San Francisco, Texas Chamber Symphony, Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra, Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, the Pennsylvania Ballet and the New York contemporary music ensemble, RESONANCE. He also served on the conducting staffs of the Baltimore Detroit, and Oakland Symphonies, the London Classical Players, the Michigan MozartFest, the Aspen Music Festival, and as Acting Director of Orchestras at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He received a Rackham Fellowship to work with Sir Roger Norrington and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. His training includes studies at Yale University with Otto-Werner Müller, the Peabody Institute-Johns Hopkins University with Frederik Prausnitz, the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Herbert von Karajan, the Aspen Music Festival with Paul Vermel, at the City University of New York with Fritz Jahoda, Cincinnati College-Conservatory with Gerhard Samuel, Queens College of CUNY, and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena with Franco Ferrara.

He is an honorary Paul Harris Fellow of the Rotary International Foundation, an honorary National Arts Associate of Sigma Alpha Iota, a member of the National Advisory Board of the Henry Mancini Institute and a member of the Alice Rich Northrop Memorial Foundation. On a Yale AluminiVentures Grant, he traveled to Cuba in 2010 to research lost works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, returning with over 1100 pages of music. Also in 2010, he rediscovered the lost opera by New Orleans composer Edmond Dédé, Le Sultan d’Ispahan, which was written in 1887 and had never been performed. Rosenberg conducted the world premiere of the overture in 2011 and is transcribing and editing the entire work for future performance. He rediscovered and reassembled Cole Porter’s final musical, Aladdin, which he then premiered in its original version. In addition to his work as a conductor and teacher, Richard is also a recording producer, chansonnier, editor and arranger. He has given several performances of H. K. Gruber’s pandemonium, Frankenstein!! as both conductor and chanssonier to critical acclaim. He  has produced two compact discs of music with jazz legend Dave Brubeck, and two discs of Mozart piano concerti with Robert Blocker, for the Naxos Records label. Richard’s numerous orchestrations and his corrected editions of J.S. Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, George Gershwin’s A Rhapsody in Blue, Arnold Schonberg’s Verklärte Nacht (which will be released in 2024 for Centaur Records) and the complete orchestral music of Gottschalk have received numerous performances.

He has led residencies at Oberlin College, the University of Kansas at Lawrence and Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. His students presently hold positions with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Philharmonic, Krakow Philharmonic, Union Symphony, Virginia Opera, Hot Springs Music Festival, Pittsburgh Symphony, Orchèstre Radio France, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Württemberg Philharmonic, as well as the Chicago, Nashville, Saint Louis, Toulon, Savannah, and the West Virginia Symphonies.

Richard Rosenberg lives with his wife, the National Music Festival’s Caitlin Patton, and their baby, Asher Dean, on Double Forte Farm in Galena, Maryland, where they rescue horses, dogs and cats, and raise dairy goats, bees, and heritage poultry.