Sheridan College Director to Perform with UW Jazz Ensembles April 17

Eric Richards, director of Sheridan College bands and jazz studies, will perform with the University of Wyoming’s Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble II at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 17, in the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts concert hall.

Tickets are $17 for the public, $13 for senior citizens and $9 for students. A nominal processing fee will be charged for each ticket. To purchase tickets, visit the Performing Arts box office, call (307) 766-6666 or go online at www.tix.com/ticket-sales/uwyo/6984.

Richards serves as Sheridan College’s music director for the college’s symphony band, jazz ensemble, jazztet, concert brass ensemble and trombone choir. He teaches applied brass, composition, history of jazz, keyboard theory and music fundamentals. Richards also is the music director and plays lead trombone for the Whitney Center Jazz Orchestra, Sheridan College’s professional big band-in-residence.

From 2008-2015, Richards served as a tenured associate professor of composition and jazz studies in the Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he led the composition program. At Nebraska, he mentored first-year through doctoral students in applied composition -- classical and jazz/vernacular styles -- and organized and led the award-winning Jazz Orchestra “2.0,” an innovative 21st century jazz ensemble combining traditional big band instrumentation with strings, horn and percussion.

He is the recipient of the 2012 Distinguished Teaching Award in the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts at Nebraska. Richards has led the Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming all-state high school jazz ensembles as well as the Southern California Honor Jazz All-Stars in concert performance at the 2018 National Association of Music Merchants Convention in Anaheim.

His work as an educator is energized by his professional practice as a widely performed composer/arranger, conductor and instrumentalist. Richards’ music has been heard on six continents in performances and recordings in major concert venues across North and South America, Europe, Australia, Asia and India.

For more information, call Kathy Kirkaldie, UW Fine Arts coordinator, at (307) 766-2160 or email kirisk@uwyo.edu.