| Richard Benefield Richard Benefield was educated at Baylor University (B.M., M.M.) and received the first doctor of musical arts degree ever awarded by the New England Conservatory of Music. His organ teachers include George McSpadden, Joyce Jones, and James David Christie. In more than 30 years as an active church musician, he held various positions at the Barrington Congregational Church, Barrington, RI; St. Stephen’s Church, Providence, RI; St. Peter’s Church, Osterville, MA; and King’s Chapel, Boston. Through a long and fruitful relationship with composer Daniel Pinkham, Dr. Benefield was involved in numerous first performances of Dr. Pinkham’s music as a singer, conductor, and organist. Among those performances were the premiere of his Sonata No. 3 for organ and strings, commissioned for the dedication of the organ in St. Peter’s Church, Osterville, MA, and the premiere of The Garden of the Muses, commissioned for the celebration of Mozart’s 250th birthday. Benefield played the world premiere of Muses at Harvard, with additional performances in Boston, Texas, New Hampshire, and at St. Thomas Church in New York City. This Old First Concert performance will be the West Coast premiere. Benefield has written on the music of Daniel Pinkham for The American Organist. He is also the author and editor 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 in its series “Recent Researches in Musicology.” Benefield is currently Executive Director of The Walt Disney Family Museum in the Presidio of San Francisco. Before migrating west to San Francisco, he was Deputy Director of the Harvard University Art Museums and Keeper of the D. A. Flentrop Organ in Harvard’s Adolphus Busch Hall—the instrument made famous by the late E. Power Biggs. O1C Performances: Richard Benefield |
