Richard Guérin's principal occupation is running Philip Glass’ record label Orange Mountain Music since 2006.  Guérin is also director of Zarathustra Music, a company that represents the recording and publishing interests for Academy Award-winning composer Elliot Goldenthal and he is the founder of the Salem Classical music series and the newly formed Supertrain Records.

 

Guérin believes that artists on all levels of accomplishment deserve not only thoughtful advocacy but also practical implementation of their visions.  While the majority of his projects are recordings, he has arranged and produced live events such as “Philip Glass – Live from Soho;” “Dracula-live to Film” with pianist Michael Riesman, and chamber concerts at the Metropolitan Museum and the Morgan Library in New York and the ongoing concert series Salem Classical.

 

For OMM, Guérin recent recording projects include many Glass works including Glass: The Symphonies, a collection of all of Glass’ ten extant symphonies,  Music with Changing Parts, Glass Complete Piano Etudes Live in Moscow with pianist Anton Batagov, Glass String Quartets Nos.6 & 7 with Brooklyn Rider, Partitas for Solo Cello with cellist Matt Haimovitz, Pendulum with Fidelio Trio and the forthcoming recordings of Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No.7 and Glass Piano Concerto No.3, organist James McVinnie’s The Grid, Cello Octet and Maki Namekawa’s Motion Picture, and Anton Batagov’s premiere recording of Glass’ Distant Figure (Passacaglia for Solo Piano.)  

 

For Zarathustra, recent releases include the world premiere recording of Goldenthal’s String Quartet No.1 “The Stone Cutters," Goldenthal’s Othello Symphony, Symphony in G# Minor, and the music for the Julie Taymor production and film of AMidsummer Night’s Dream.

 

In 2012, in celebration of Glass’ 75th birthday, Guérin coordinated a campaign with iTunes around the US Premiere of Glass’ Ninth Symphony premiering at Carnegie Hall. The release work remained on the top of the iTunes Classical charts for weeks, peaking at No.15 on the Pop charts.  In spring 2014 Guérin curated the Pacific Symphony’s American Composers Festival that showcased concert works by famous film composers. The program included Tributes! For Seiji by John Williams, the West Coast premiere of Howard Shore’s cello concerto Mythic Gardens,  the world concert premiere of Flight by James Horner and the world premiere of Symphony in G# Minor by Elliot Goldenthal. Goldenthal’s Symphony in G# Minor consequently had its European premiere with the Bruckner Orchester Linz in September 2015 as part of the Ars Electronica Festival in Austria.   Also in 2015, Guerin founded Salem Classical, a chamber and world music series in the venerable Old Town Hall in historic Salem Massachusetts.

 

In 2017, in addition to the festivities surrounding "Philip Glass @80,”  a number of new projects and recordings came to fruition ranging from participating in the creation of the Benjamin Zander Media Center to the founding of Supertrain Records, the premiere of a new Goldenthal work with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia at the Kimmel Center, a new label dedicated to the various interests in Guerin’s musical world outside the purview of his activities with Philip Glass and Elliot Goldenthal.  

 

Initial releases in early 2018 include the first digital release of Michael Riesman's (music director of the Philip Glass Ensemble) 1987 album Formal Abandon and the premiere digital release of esteemed American composer and pianist William Bolcom’s original 1971 recording of his first twelve piano etudes.  Future releases include a two piano recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.4 (arr. Shostakovich) by Dennis Russell Davies and Namekawa, the ballet Potential Energies by composer Trevor Gureckis, the album Countdown to Silence by Kummerspeck, and more. In 2018 Guerin travelled to Poland once again for the world premiere of Goldenthal’s Trumpet Concerto with Tine Thing Helseth as part of the Kilar Award in Krakow and Katowice on a program with Penderecki.  He also initiated a Polish Music Festival with the Chicago Philharmonic including a performance of Wojciech Kilar’s Missa Pro Pace celebrating 100 year of Polish Independence.

 

A native of the Boston area, Guérin interned for the Boston Pops Orchestra in 2004, worked for Columbia Artists Management, acted as General Manager for Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony in 2004-05.  He has been published by the American Music Center's New Music Box and spoken about concert hall architecture at New York Institute of Technology and Arts Administration at Northeastern University.  He is also a frequent lecturer on the music of Philip Glass including recently at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and on stage interviews with Glass at the Metropolitan Museum, the Sacrum Profanum Festival in Krakow Poland, and at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem Mass. on the occasion of the world premiere of Partita No.2 for Solo Cello in June 2017.