Max Richter

British composer, pianist, producer and remixer Max Richter is one of the most influential and acclaimed composers of all time. His fusion of classical technique and electronic technology, heard across genre-defining solo albums and countless scores for film, dance, art and fashion, has won him legions of fans around the world and blazed a trail for a generation of musicians.  

Richter’s work explores themes of hope, activism and the environment, influenced by poets like Wordsworth and Redgrove, while maintaining a sense of emotional directness. As with his previous works, Richter emphasizes creating alternate realities through music, offering solace and reflection on our place in the world. 

Richter studied composition at Edinburgh University, the Royal Academy of Music and with Berio in Florence. In the early 1990s he co-founded Piano Circus, a six-piano ensemble that commissioned and performed works by Steve Reich and Philip Glass, among others. 

He made his Royal Ballet debut in 2008 creating the original score for Wayne McGregor’s Infra. His chamber opera Sum had its world premiere in the Linbury Studio Theatre in 2012, directed by McGregor. Other collaborations include the original score for McGregor’s full-length ballet Woolf Works (2015) and MADDADDAM (2022), Kairos for Ballet Zürich, and the installations Rain Room at the Barbican and MoMA and Future Self at Lunds konsthall, both for Random International. 

In 2002 Richter released his first solo album memoryhouse on the BBC Late Junction label. He has subsequently released four more solo albums – The Blue Notebooks, Songs from Before, 24 Postcards in Full Colour and Infra – on FatCat, and Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (winner of the 2013 ECHO Klassik Award) on Deutsche Grammophon, where Richter is now an exclusive artist. Richter’s latest solo album, In A Landscape, released this summer to critical acclaim. The record is the first to be written and recorded at his serene new studio in rural Oxfordshire and is a fleeting self-portrait of a musician in constant motion.  

Richter’s extensive work in film and television includes Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir (winner of the European Film Award), James Kent’s Testament of Youth, Damon Lindelof’s The Leftovers for HBO, Johan Renck’s sci-fi drama Spaceman and the Elisabeth Moss spy thriller The Veil. He also composed music for the Mark Rothko retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton.