Ric Louchard

Ric grew up in Palo Alto, California. He started piano lessons at 6 and liked them a lot. He studied classical piano until he was 11, then switched to popular piano and organ with Arthur Chedekel for 3 years, playing lots of songs by the Beatles and learning to play blues, rock and a little jazz. Ric began writing music when he was 14, and found his ideas sounded like classical music so he began studying classical piano, music theory and composition with David Williams in Palo Alto and Frederick DeHaven in Connecticut in the summers.

From 1972 to 1976, Ric went to the University of Northern Colorado to study piano and composition. While there he conducted a performance of his chamber opera, The Inquisitor, and won the the undergraduate concerto contest and played Beethoven's first piano concerto with the school orchestra. His last year in Colorado, Ric studied composition with Normand Lockwood in Denver.

Ric ran out of money for school in 1976 so he returned to Palo Alto and began teaching piano. Ric then went to San Jose State University to study baroque performance on piano and harpsichord with Fernando Valenti and composition with Allen Strange, and finished his Bachelor's degree in composition and theory there.

SInce then, Ric has worked as a piano teacher and raised his kids around the Palo Alto area. In the 1990s he released five CDs on the Music For Little People record label, a division of Warner Brothers. The first, "G'Night Wolfgang, Classical Piano Solos for Bedtime" was a finalist for the"Indie" award for best classical release of 1990. He went on to record solo piano recordings "G'Morning Johann", "Hey Ludwig", "Ragtime Romp" (which won Oppenheim Toy Portfolio's 2002 Platinum Award for children's audio), and, playing harpsichord with recorder player David Barnett, "Winter Light".

In 1995 Ric received a grant from the Peninsula Community Fund to record a CD of his original piano music "Giving With Both Hands", and later received another grant to perform his "Five Movements for Saxophone Quintet".

In April of 2017, Ric was delighted to be a guest artist at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in a performance with his friend and colleague Michael Rothkopf. Ric performed his piano solo "Vexations Variations" and "Pasiphae: Four Arias for Soprano and Piano" with the wonderful Elizabeth Pacheco Rose.

Ric has been performing house concerts around the bay area lately and just finished a CD of one of the programs he likes to perform: "Slouching Towards Individuation".