BMI Conducting Workshop Celebrates Ten Years of Honing Talent

BMI’s Conducting Workshop recently celebrated 10 years of teaching composers the art of conducting musical scores. BMI Classic Contribution Award-winner, conductor and composer Lucas Richman once again led the program. Conducting for the Film Composer is a two-week course taught by Richman and designed for eight BMI composers who seek to refine their conducting skills. The class is taught at the American Federation of Musicians Local 47 in Hollywood, CA and is free to the accepted participants.

Conductor Lucas Richman (l) and composer Tim Wynn.

This year’s students are an exemplary group of working film and television composers: Kathryn Bostic (Sundance Fellow, Beyond the Ring, Contradictions of the Heart); Kris Carter (Justice League, Teen Titans); Eric Colvin (NASCAR 3D: The IMAX Experience, Bark!); Claude Foisy (The 4400, White Noise); Corey Jackson (Left in Darkness, Starting Over); Dave Reynolds (Cruel Intentions 3, Tides of War); Craig Richey (Friends with Money, Lovely & Amazing); Tim Wynn (Reflections of Venice, Chasing the Light). The class is coordinated by BMI’s Senior Director of Film/TV Relations, Ray Yee, and BMI’s Film/TV Relations staff.

The whole group pauses for a photo: (l-r, front): BMI’s Ray Yee, composer Kathryn Bostic, conductor Lucas Richman and composer Kris Carter; (back) composer Corey Jackson, BMI’s Linda Livingston, composers Tim Wynn and Eric Colvin, BMI’s Doreen Ringer Ross, composers Craig Richey, and Dave Reynolds, contractor David Low, composer Claude Foisy, BMI’s Anne Cecere and Philip Shrut.

BMI recently recognized accomplished conductor and composer Lucas Richman with the 2007 Classic Contribution Award for 10 years of service leading BMI’s celebrated Conductor’s Workshop. A BMI composer, Richman has led the workshop since its inception. Presently Music Director and Conductor for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Richman is a leading expert in conducting and composing, having fashioned an outstanding career as a conductor with numerous symphonies and orchestras in the U.S. as well as collaborator with numerous film composers as their conductor for such films as the Academy Award-nominated As Good As It Gets, Face/Off, Seven, Breakdown, Anastasia and The Village.

Past participants in the highly touted lab, include composers Cliff Martinez, Stewart Copeland, Camara Kambon, Danny Pelfrey, Richard Gibbs, Bill Brown, Bennett Salvay, Rolfe Kent, Julie and Steve Bernstein, Anthony Marinelli, Alex Wurman, Gary Kuo, Tyler Bates, Nathan Barr, James Venable, Mervyn Warren, Christopher Lennertz and Laura Karpman.

Photos: Anna Maria DiSanto