The 2023 Old West Organ Society Summer Series continues with a performance by Richard Benefield. Admission is free; donations are gratefully accepted in support of the Society.
Richard Benefield (DMA, MM, BM) has had parallel careers in both art museums and classical music, beginning his training in art and piano at the age of six. He has performed as organist, singer, and conductor across the United States, and in more than 30 years in the art world, has served in leadership roles for art museums at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Harvard University, as well as the Walt Disney Family Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (de Young and Legion of Honor). Even with a busy career in arts management, he has served as organist-choirmaster of St. Peter’s Church, Osterville, MA; St. Stephen’s Church, Providence, RI; and Old First Presbyterian Church, San Francisco, CA, among others. He has had the distinction of overseeing famous organs at two of the museums under his leadership: the great Spreckles Organ (E.M. Skinner) in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and the renowned D.A. Flentrop Organ in Adolphus Busch Hall at Harvard.
In 1977, Dr. Benefield began a long and fruitful professional relationship and friendship with composer Daniel Pinkham when he was contracted to sing the role of Simon in the Southwest (Dallas, TX) premiere of Pinkham’s The Passion of Judas, a “chancel opera,” which the composer conducted. Subsequently, in the 1984-85 season, he performed the same role for the Peabody-Mason Music Foundation at Harvard University, with the composer conducting. That performance was broadcast from Sanders Theater over the NPR affiliate, WGBH radio in Boston. Benefield conducted the New England premieres of Pinkham’s Advent Cantata (1992) and A curse, a Lament, and a Vision (1985), and the world premieres of Pinkham’s The Small Requiem (1992) and The Guiding Star (1993). He has played many keyboard works by Pinkham including the world premieres of Sonata No. 3 for organ and strings (1987) and The Garden of the Muses for solo organ (2006).
Dr. Benefield has written on the music of Daniel Pinkham for The American Organist. He is also the author of Motets for One Voice by Franck, Gounod, and Saint-Saëns: The Organ-Accompanied Solo Motet in Nineteenth-Century France, published in 2003 by A-R Editions of Madison, Wisconsin, in its series “Recent Researches in Musicology.”
He currently serves as executive director of the George Rickey Foundation, Inc., and lives with his husband John Kunowski and their two Lagotti Romagnoli, Rupert and Lizzy, in the Seacoast Region of New Hampshire.