Mark Riches – Music Director

Mark Riches grew up in Norfolk where he studied Piano with Maggie Teggin as well as Voice with Bryan Drake and Cello with Maja Passchier. Whilst studying for a degree in Music at Trinity College Cambridge, he studied Piano with Phyllis Palmer and Voice with Geraldine Hackett-Jones.

Mark has always specialised in working with singers, as an accompanist, coach and conductor, especially in the field of opera.

Some of the works Mark has been répétiteur for include La Gioconda, Un Ballo in Maschera, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Fledermaus, Carmen, Turandot, Nabucco, The Merry Widow, The Pirates of Penzance, The Gondoliers and My Fair Lady with companies such as Cambridge University Opera Society, Norfolk Opera Players, Brent Opera, Hampstead Garden Opera, Kentish Opera, Belcanto Festival Opera, Lewes Operatic Society and Opera South East. As Music Director of Hampstead Garden Opera he directed performances of Cavalleria Rusticana, I Pagliacci, La Traviata, Die Zauberflöte and La Bohème; with Belcanto Festival Opera he conducted Die Fledermaus and Macbeth.

In addition to his operatic work, Mark performs as a solo concert pianist. He has also worked at the Royal Russell School in Croydon teaching Piano, accompanying the Choral Society and conducting the Orchestra. As part of his work there he conducted the School’s 150th Anniversary Concert with the New London Sinfonia in a “Last Night of the Proms” style programme which also included some of the Richard Strauss Orchestral Songs sung by soprano Miriam Murphy. He has been the official accompanist for the Croydon Music Festival and for the Opera da Camera summer school at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.