Grammy-winning American lyric tenor Richard Clement has performed with most of America’s major orchestras and music directors, bringing tonal beauty and superb musicality to repertoire from the baroque to the contemporary. His 2006-2007 season includes The Dream of Gerontius with Grant Llewellyn and the North Carolina Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the New Jersey, San Antonio, Colorado symphonies, Elijah with the Memphis Symphony and Theofanides’s The Here and Now with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony, including a performance in New York’s Carnegie Hall.  

Following summer performances of the Verdi Requiem at the Chautauqua Festival and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphonywith the Nashville Symphony and National Arts Centre Orchestra, Clement’s 2005-2006 season included the role of Belmonte in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail with Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony, Rachmaninoff’s The Bells with Jeffrey Kahane and the Colorado Symphony, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Andreas Delfs and the Milwaukee Symphony, Michael Christie and the Phoenix Symphony and Jahja Ling and the San Diego Symphony; a return to Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society for an all-Mozart concert under Grant Llewellyn, and Mozart’s Zaide with New York’s Absolut Ensemble. 

The previous season included opening the Detroit Symphony in Carmina Burana with Neeme Järvi, both Handel’s Messiah and the Mozart C Minor Mass with the Handel & Haydn Society, Messiah with the Ann Arbor Symphony, the Verdi Requiem with David Allan Miller and the Albany Symphony and Haydn’s Creation with Duain Wolfe and the Colorado Symphony.

Recent seasons have also included  performances of Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht and Second Symphony with Kurt Masur and the Israel Philharmonic; Toch’s Cantata of the Bitter Herbs with the Czech Philharmonic; the Mozart Requiem with the Saint Louis Symphony; Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony; Beethoven’s Missa solemnis/Ninth Symphony and Bach’s B Minor Mass with the Detroit Symphony; Kernis’s Millenium Symphony with the Minnesota Orchestra;  Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony with the Atlanta Symphony; Tippett’s A Child of Our Time with Jeffrey Kahane and the Santa Rosa Symphony; The Creation with Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society; Rachmaninoff’s The Bells with Leon Botstein and the American Symphony in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall; Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ and a Beethoven’s Missa solemnis/Ninth Symphony with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, under Daniel Harding and Hugh Wolff, respectively.  In addition, Clement has been guest soloist with the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras; Houston, Toronto, San Francisco and Cincinnati symphonies, and collaborated with such conductors as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Jesús López-Cobos, Bobby McFerrin, Christopher Hogwood, Carlo Rizzi,  John Mauceri, Marin Alsop and James Conlon.

Festival engagements include Tanglewood (concert performance of Act III of Verdi’s Falstaff), Beethoven’s Ninth at both Grant Park and the Hollywood Bowl, and the Bach B Minor Mass with Seiji Ozawa at Japan’s Saito Kinen Festival.

Clement’s considerable operatic credentials include Pedrillo in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail with Sir Colin Davis and the New York Philharmonic; Tamino in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at Belgium’s De Vlaamse Opera and with the Colorado Symphony. His roles at the Vancouver Opera include Nanki-Poo (The Mikado), Ferrando (Così fan tutte), Little Bat (Susannah) and Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni); Ernesto (Don Pasquale) at Glimmerglass Opera; Vanya (Katya Kabanova) and To-No-Chujo (Tale of the Genji) at Opera Theater of St. Louis; Belmonte (Entführung) with the Boston Baroque; Lensky (Eugen Onegin) and  Nemorino (L’elisir d’amore) at Opera Festival of New Jersey; Candide, Lockwood (Wuthering Heights) and Fenton (Falstaff) at Boston Lyric Opera; and Albert Herring with the Atlanta Opera.

Clement studied voice at Georgia State University and the Cincinnati Conservatory, where he received his Master of Music degree. He was a Tanglewood Music Festival Fellow, has been a member of the Houston Grand Opera Studio and was a recipient of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation Jacobson Study Grant.  Recordings include Britten’s War Requiem with the Washington Choral Society, Bartók’s Cantata Profana with the Atlanta Symphony (both Grammy winners) and Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame.  He appears by exclusive arrangement with Matthew Sprizzo.