Composer-pianist Richard Trythall studied composition and piano at the University of Tennessee, at Princeton University, and at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, Germany. As a composer, he has received the Rome Prize in Musical Composition; a Guggenheim Fellowship; the Naumburg Recording Award; a Fulbright Fellowship; and composition commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation, Dorian Woodwind Quintet, and the Gruppo Percussione Ricerca (Venice, Italy). His compositions, which include works for orchestra, for smaller ensembles, for solo piano, and for tape (electronic works), have been performed at, among others, New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Tanglewood Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Gaudeamus Festival in Holland, the Settembre Musica Festival of Turin, the Nuova Consonanza Festival in Rome, and the Darmstadt Festival in Germany. His percussion work, Bolero, has been danced by the Ballet Company of the Municipal Theater of Sao Paulo, Brazil, as well as by ballet companies in Italy, South Africa, and the United States.
As a concert pianist, Trythall won first prize in the Kranichsteiner Competition for Interpreters of Contemporary Piano Music held in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1969. Since then, he has performed widely in Europe and has recorded extensively for the Italian radio (RAI). He has frequently performed as piano soloist with the Rome Radio Orchestra.
His solo piano concerts stress American music of the twentieth century and include his own piano compositions, as well as music by Charles Ives, George Gershwin, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, and others. In addition to his activities as pianist and composer, Trythall is “Music Liaison” for the American Academy in Rome, overseeing that institution’s musical program in Rome since 1970. For many years, he was also the Italian correspondent for the American magazine Keyboard.
He has written frequently on American music for various Italian publications, and in 1995 he organized the weeklong American Country Music festival, which took place at Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni. In 2000 he was artistic director of the Euro-America Festival held in Acquasanta Terme (Marche, Italy).