Steph Richards Power Vibe

"A trumpeter whose skills transcend any category" (WBGO).

Steph Richards has recorded with groundbreaking artists such as Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton and John Zorn to St. Vincent, David Byrne and Yoko Ono, and her sonic explorations have led to collaborations with performance artists such as Mike Kelly, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed, as well as collaborations with Jason Moran, Ravi Coltrane, Sylvie Courvoisier and others.

Driven by a curiosity about how listeners:inside interact with music and what sensory variables are open to experimentation, her own compositions have been performed in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and Europe, and premiered on the stages of Carnegie Hall, the Blue Note, and Lincoln Center, including works for carousel and choreographed ensemble, underwater percussion, and 600 found objects.

Originally from Canada, Richards has spent much of her career in Brooklyn, NY. Richards has performed with the Kronos Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Pixies, and Kanye West, and is co-producer of the FONT Music Festival with trumpeter Dave Douglas. She is a member of Henry Threadgill's Kestra and Bang on a Can's Asphalt Orchestra, of which she is a founding member and with whom she has collaborated with St. Vincent, Tyondai Braxton, and choreographer Susan Marshall. She holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, McGill University, and the California Institute of the Arts, and is an instructor at UCSD.

Her debut album Fullmoon (Relative Pitch Records) was hailed as an "bold announcement" (New York Times) and featured on several "Best of 2018" year-end lists, including Free Jazz Collective's #1 Record of the Year. Steph's "genius" (WBGO) 2019 album "Take The Neon Lights" was highly praised, with NextBop calling the album "hypnotizing... Fans of avant-garde jazz should definitely give it a listen" and was voted Best of 2019 by The NYC Jazz Record Review. Fall 2020 saw the release of their album SUPERSENSE: Music for Scent and Sound (Northern Spy Records) - "unquestionably beautiful...an engaging multi-sensory tableau" (5 stars review, Downbeat).