East Studio Building, JS306
Education
- M.M., Master of Music, Indiana University, 1986
- B.M., Bachelor of Music, Wayne State University, 1982
Biography
Richard Seraphinoff is professor of music in horn and natural horn at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he teaches modern horn, natural horn, and courses in brass literature as well as coaching chamber music.
A native of Detroit, Michigan, he holds degrees in horn performance from Wayne State University and Indiana University. Among his horn teachers are Lowell Greer, Philip Farkas, Meir Rimon, Francis Orval, Michael Hatfield, and Myron Bloom.
Seraphinoff was the winner of the 1984 Erwin Bodky Early Music Competition and the 1981 Heldenleben Horn Competition. As a modern horn player he has performed with the Detroit Symphony and Toledo Symphony Orchestras and the Michigan Opera Theater. As a Natural Hornist he has performed and recorded with nearly every Baroque and Classical orchestra in the U.S., including the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Grande Bande, Concert Royal, and Mozartean Players of New York, the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, The City Musick and Basically Bach of Chicago, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (San Francisco), Lyra Baroque Orchestra, Indianapolis baroque orchestra, Apollo’s Fire of Cleveland, and many others.
He has appeared as soloist at the Aston Magna Festival, with the Vancouver CBC Orchestra, Indianapolis baroque orchestra, and with La Stagione and Ensemble Metamorphosis in Germany. He has given lectures and master classes and appeared as guest recitalist at International Horn Symposiums and Historic Brass Society workshops in the United States and Europe, has written articles for the Historic Brass Society Journal, The Horn Call, and several other journals, and has recorded CDs with his own horn and string quartet group, Cornucopia. With co-author Linda Dempf he has written the Guide to the Solo Horn Repertoire published by Indiana University Press.
Seraphinoff is also a well-known maker of historical reproductions of Baroque and Classical Natural Horns, and has teaches courses each summer in early brass instrument making techniques in Europe and the US. Since 1992 he has given summer workshops in Natural Horn history and performance at Indiana University, which have been attended by horn players from around the world.