Richard Stephan

Richard A. Stephan has earned degrees from the State University of New York at Fredonia and the Eastman School of Music with advanced work at the University of Buffalo and Brigham Young University. He taught instrumental music in the public schools of Buffalo and was an orchestra director and Coordinator of Music in the Hamburg, New York schools for 13 years. Mr. Stephan joined the Crane School of Music, S.U.N.Y. at Potsdam, New York in 1968 where he was the Symphony Orchestra conductor and string education professor for the next 32 years.

Mr. Stephan has appeared as a guest conductor/clinician in New York, Ohio, Utah, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, and Ontario, Canada. He conducted the opening ceremonies of the 1980 Winter Olympics and in 1984 was honored with a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to lecture and conduct in Australia. His Fanfare and Frippery was the 1986 National School Orchestra Association Composition Contest and he has over three dozen published works for string, full, and studio orchestra to his credit. Since his retirement from teaching in 2000, Mr. Stephan has continued his writing and guest conducting.