music commissions and sponsorships
 Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation
Since 2011 Jack has become a patron of the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, and provides an annual grant to the foundation to support Dame Kiri’s work with young opera singers.
Principal recent commissions
2011
- Jack has commissioned a piano concerto by leading New Zealand composer Gareth Farr, to be performed in 2013.
2010
- A concert featuring two pieces commissioned by Jack Richards was held at Victoria University, Wellington, on July 11, 2010. The concert was in support of a scholarship program funded by Dr. Richards. It recieved a glowing review in Wellington's Captial Times.
- Composer John Psathas has been commissioned to compose a piano work for pianist Simon Tedeschi. The piece will have its first performance at an event in Wellington In May 2010.
- Wellington-based composer Stephan Prock has been commissioned to write a song cycle based on poems by New Zealand poet Alistair Campbell. They will be performed by soprano Margaret Medlyn at a recital in July 2010.
- Christchurch-based Chinese composer Gao Ping has received a commission to write a song cycle for leading Chinese singer Gong Dong-Jian. Gao Ping’s previous commission from Jack Richards was for a piano concerto that received impressive reviews at its first performance.
2009
- Jack Richards has commissioned a work entitled The Abiding Tides from senior New Zealand composer, Ross Harris. The Abiding Tides is for soprano and strinq quartet and is scheduled for performance at the International Festival of the Arts in Wellington in 2010.
The poet Vincent O'Sullivan, who wrote the words forThe Abiding Tides, has written the following about the work:
"It is almost a hundred years since the sinking of the Titanic in the Atlantic, it is less than two months since the last boat of illegal immigrants sank north of Australia. These songs move between such events - the high hopes, the desperation; the individual minds, the impersonal forces. And what Herman Melville called 'the great shroud of the sea' smoothed over both." Vincent O'Sullivan
- Composer’s fee for an orchestral piece by composer Jack Body, entitled My Name is Mok Bhon. The piece is a response to a visit by the composer to the infamous Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia, also known as S-21, where an estimated 14,000 men, women and children passed through its gates to be photographed, interrogated, tortured and finally executed as perceived enemies of Pol Pot's regime. Mok Bhon is but one of these victims. Jack Richards makes a dedication of this work to the memory of his friend Kong Orn, another victim of the Khmer Rouge purges. First performance: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, May 2009.
- Composer’s fee for an opera by Jenny Macleod entitled Hohepa.
- Commission for a piano concerto by UK-based New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell, to be performed in 2010.
- Grant towards the publication of a set of original pieces by New Zealand composers, for young piano students.
2008
- Song cycle of poems by New Zealand poet Janet Frame, composed by Jenny Macleod, in honor of accompanist Bruce Greenfield’s 60th birthday.
Performed by soprano Margaret Medlyn and pianist Rosemary Barnes, at Victoria University, November 2008.
- Piano concerto by New Zealand-based Chinese composer Gao Ping which premiered at the Wellington Town Hall on May 9. It had an enthusiastic reception, evidenced by this review in the New Zealand Listener.
2006
- Piano suite entitled From Jack to Jack by composer Jenny Macleod, commissioned to celebrate the 60th birthday of leading new Zealand composer Jack Body.
Performed by pianist Diedre Ions at a private concert at Victoria University, Wellington, October 2004.
Jenny McLeod is considered one of the most naturally gifted of all New Zealand composers. Clearly one of the major paths in her life has been a search for spiritual meaning, whether through the cosmic questions posed Under the Sun, her devotional rock music for the Divine Light Mission, her writings for the Christian communities to whom she has been attached in recent years, or her choice to retire to a quiet, almost meditative life-style. Something of her strength of character may be judged from her embracing of the “Tone Clock Theory” as an intellectual as well as musical challenge. Over a period of several years she has compiled a large body of theoretical work on the subject. Her career has been a remarkable procession of extraordinary changes of direction, periods of intensive creative activity interspersed with periods of inactivity, and stylistic volte faces – one moment radical avant-gardism, then popular music. However, she now moves with ease between different musical worlds – “serious” music, popular music, music for the church, and for Maori communities.
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