RICHARD BROOKS

Richard Brooks has been an active professional musician in the Connecticut and New York region as a performer, conductor and teacher for over 30 years.

 

Richard began his study of music with violin lessons at the age of 8. His earliest training was with John F. Burnett, a pupil of Belgian virtuoso Ovide Musin. Growing up, he played in local youth and community orchestras and was selected for the All-Connecticut High School Orchestra for 3 years. He enrolled as a Music Education major at Western Connecticut State University in 1972, but the summer of his freshman year brought many profound personal changes.

 

After being invited to perform in a benefit concert with saxophonist Paul Winter and singer Mary Travers, Brooks became interested in pursuing a more creative and contemporary approach to the violin. Through that performance he met, and consequently studied briefly with the innovative improvising cellist David Darling. He dropped out of college and traveled with his girlfriend extensively around the United States, residing briefly in Florida and camping at National Parks in the western states. When he returned to Danbury in 1977, he co-founded the ensemble Solstice along with guitarist Andy Lafreniere and multi-instrumentalist Guy Dedell. Solstice explored free group improvisation and created original instrumental music for the next decade, building a cult following and performing many school concerts and workshops. The group’s performances included appearances at Music Mountain, the Hartford State Capitol, and New York’s prestigious Lincoln Center. Solstice recorded a self-titled independent album before disbanding in 1987.

 

Meanwhile, Brooks returned to Western Connecticut State University and completed his degree in Violin Performance, studying violin with Eric Lewis of the Manhattan String Quartet and music theory and composition with Richard Moryl. He also completed conducting classes with Donald Craig and Donald Wells.

 

Since 1988 Brooks has appeared in solo performances on his electric and acoustic violins and in various combinations with other instrumentalists. His 1989 group, featuring keyboardist Nick Bariluk, was active on the Hartford, New Haven, Danbury and New York jazz circuit and was featured at the 1989 New Haven Jazz Festival. His 1991 CD release Alone Amongst Friends combines performances of that band with unaccompanied solo interpretations of jazz standards. It also includes his solo electric violin improvisation Duet For One, which one newspaper reviewer called “a technological tour-de-force.”

 

 

 

 

 

Brooks was Music Director and Conductor of the Cheshire Symphony Orchestra from 1987 to 2014 and Conductor of the Norwalk Youth Symphony’s Concert Orchestra from 1998 to 2014. For 20 years, from 1981-2001, he was Music Director and Conductor of the Danbury Community Orchestra and he directed the Danbury Summer String Program from 1989-2001. He was a founding director for the Western Connecticut State University Summer String Camp from its inception in 2001 until 2007. He has served on the adjunct music faculties of the Wooster School in Danbury and The Gunnery in Washington, Connecticut. He was a co-founder of the Violin Audition Prep Program and maintains private violin and viola teaching associations with Westchester Home Music and Continuo Home Music.

 

Brooks’ guest conducting credits include the Fairfield County String Festival, The Charles Ives Center for the Arts’ June Goodman Young Peoples Concert, The All-Putnam and All-Westchester County School Festivals in New York, the CMEA Eastern Region Middle School Orchestra and the Danbury Symphony Orchestra.

 

In 1998, Brooks conducted in an Emmy nominated video broadcast on CBS for the NCAA Road to the Final Four. He’s conducted performances of the Norwalk Youth Symphony at Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood and outdoors at Lincoln Center and the United Nations Plaza. In the summer of 2008 he directed the Norwalk Youth Symphony on a European tour that included performances in Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague and in the summer of 2010 he conducted performances by the same group in Italy.

 

Brooks conducted members of the Norwalk Youth Symphony and New Haven Symphony in 2013 in a concert entitled “Strings For Newtown,” to benefit “Healing Newtown,” an organization set up after the school shootings in Sandy Hook. The program featured violin virtuoso Mark O'Connor, Jay Ungar (composer of the well-known Ashokan Farewell) and concert organizer Julie Lyon Lieberman, among others. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmeozMfJ8dU)

 

Brooks maintains an active free-lance career, performing and recording with a wide range of musicians in a wide range of styles. He has composed and recorded string tracks for several pop artists and has performed short stints with the likes of the Mantovani Orchestra and The McGuire Sisters. He has also recorded with the rock group Head East and others. He still performs with his own jazz group and a classical chamber group.

 

Brooks released a CD in 1998 entitled Violin Electric on the now defunct label J-Bird Records. A cut from that album was released on the J-Bird 1999 compilation album Spirit For The Millennium and was heard on NPR’s nationally broadcast Echoes radio program. His music has also been featured on Bowed Radio on the Internet.