Richard Jackson MA

Richard Jackson is a Cornishman, educated at King’s College, Cambridge, and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. His teachers have included Arthur Reckless, Thomas Hemsley, Erich Vietheer, and Audery Langford. He has sung roles for English National Opera, Glyndebourne, Opera North, and La Monnaie in Brussels. He has worked with many notable musicians including Menotti in London, and Rostropovich in Aldeburgh. His television debut was in the role of Christus in Jonathan Miller’s staging of St. Matthew Passion on BBC TV. He was a founder-member of Graham Johnson’s Songmaker’s Almanac, appearing more than 100 times in London, Germany, the USA, and Hong Kong, as well as on the group's CD series.

As a singer of New Music, he has starred in five operas for London’s Almeida Opera, returning there in 2003 to sing the lead role in a new Jonathan Mills work. In 2002 he appeared at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, in two operas by Guo Wen Jing. Recent CDs include music by Michael Finnissy and Bernard Stevens.

Richard Jackson is a busy teacher and giver of Master Classes. At the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, his primary teaching college, he teaches both German and French Song. He visits The Royal Academy of Music as a teacher of new music, and Trinity College of Music for German Song classes. He leads the Singers’ workshop at Morley College, and teaches at the Summer School at Ardingly. Abroad, he has taught in France, Norway, and Australia, where he has given Master Classes alongside Dame Joan Sutherland, and in 2001 was a member of the jury for the Kathleen Ferrier Competition.