Membership: ASCAP
Email: margarichter@optonline.net
A Wisconsin native, Marga Richter received her early musical training in Minneapolis and her Bachelors and Masters Degrees in composition from The Juilliard School, where she studied with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti. Her music first came to national attention in the late 1950s through a series of recordings commissioned and released by MGM Records. One of her best known works is the ballet ABYSS, which has been performed by the Harkness(which commissioned it), Joffrey, Boston, Pennsylvania and other ballet companies. Richter’s music has been performed by such eminent soloists as Jessye Norman, Menahem Pressler and Daniel Heifetz, and by over 60 orchestras, including the Atlanta and Milwaukee Symphonies, the Minnesota Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic and London Philharmonic Orchestra, which recorded her BLACKBERRY VINES AND WINTER FRUIT. Twenty-two of Richter’s other works have been released on LPs and CDs, the most recent of which are SPECTRAL CHIMES/ENSHROUDED HILLS and QUANTUM QUIRKS OF A QUICK QUAINT QUARK by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and OUT OF SHADOWS AND SOLITUDE by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, both with Gerard Schwarz conducting. QUANTUM QUIRKS was premiered in 1992 by Marin Alsop and the Long Island Philharmonic. Richter has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, the National Federation of Music Clubs, Meet the Composer and ASCAP.