Aaron Richmond

Aaron Richmond (October 28, 1895, in Salem, Massachusetts – April 21, 1965, in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American performing arts manager, pianist, impresario, and educator, based in Boston, Massachusetts, who managed the careers of numerous classical musicians and founded, in the late 1930s, Celebrity Series of Boston, a performing arts presenting organization that still operates today.

Early years

Aaron Richmond was born in 1895 in Salem, Massachusetts, where he had his formal education. After graduating from high school, he intensified his musical training with the goal of becoming a concert pianist. The following was noted in a brief Boston Globe review of a 1919 performance in which Richmond accompanied baritone Giovanni Petrucci at Boston's Steinert Hall, "Mr. Petrucci was assisted by Aaron Richmond, who played his accompaniments and a group of piano pieces."

In 1917, Richmond toured extensively as a pianist with the Tchaikovsky Quartet. During the same period, Richmond's friend, conductor Arthur Fiedler, was forced to cancel a series of bookings on the Chautauqua circuit. Mr. Richmond filled in as pianist on the tour and later organized Richmond’s Little Symphony, a sextet that toured the circuit for several summers playing arrangements of orchestral works. He served as pianist and lecturer on the program and often the newspaper critic of the concerts. Richmond’s Little Symphony made at least one Chautuaqua circuit tour with William Jennings Bryan.

Artist manager

An onstage lapse of memory during Richmond's Boston debut caused him to reevaluate his professional goals and led him to a career in music management. His first office contained a studio where he continued to teach piano while he formed the core of his artists’ list from members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and some prominent Boston vocalists.

Pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski was quoted as saying of Richmond, "[He was] perhaps the only manager I have ever known to whom the word 'suite' has meant a musical composition and not a set of furniture for a room."

In 1984, the Celebrity Series changed affiliations and moved its operations under the auspices of the Wang Center for the Performing Arts. Then, in 1989, the Celebrity Series incorporated as Bank of Boston Celebrity Series, an independent, non-profit institution with its own board of directors and an annual budget of over $3 million. Today the Celebrity Series annual operating budget is approximately $7 million. After 18 years of operating with the title sponsorship support of Bank of Boston, BankBoston, FleetBoston Financial, and Bank of America, the Celebrity Series began operating under its incorporated name, Celebrity Series of Boston, in June 2007.

Aaron Richmond presented many performers during his 27-year tenure as director of the Celebrity Series of Boston:

Music

Adolf Busch Alexander Brailowsky Andrés Segovia Artur Rubinstein Artur Schnabel Arturo Toscanini Béla Bartók Benny Goodman Berlin Philharmonic Birgit Nilsson Boris Goldovsky Burl Ives Chicago Symphony Orchestra Cleveland Orchestra Claudio Arrau Efrem Zimbalist Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Eugene Ormandy Ezio Pinza Francis Poulenc Fritz Kreisler NBC Symphony Orchestra New York Philharmonic Philadelphia Orchestra Sadlers Wells Ballet/Royal Ballet Trudi Schoop and Her Dancing Comedians Uday Shankar and his Hindu Ballet

Theatre/speakers

Bristol Old Vic Cornelia Otis Skinner his associate Walter Pierce assumed direction of the Celebrity Series. In 1986, Mr. Pierce hired Martha H. Jones as the Celebrity Series' Director of Marketing. She later became general manager, and, in 1996, when Mr. Pierce retired his full-time post, Martha Jones was appointed executive director. Following Martha Jones' retirement from the Celebrity Series in 2011, Gary Dunning was appointed to the position.

Association with Sol Hurok Aaron Richmond's business association with noted impresario Sol Hurok dated from 1926. Richmond frequently served as the regional representative for Hurok's tours. On Richmond's death in 1965, Hurok said in The Boston Globe

Other projects Richmond served as artistic advisor to numerous colleges and committees throughout the New England area, including the Boston Morning Musical Association (Boston, Massachusetts), the Harvard Musical Association (Boston, Massachusetts), Weston Country Evening Concert Series, South End Music Centre (Boston, Massachusetts), Boston Community Music Centre (Boston, Massachusetts), the James Spooner Fund Concerts (Plymouth, Massachusetts), Gile Fund Concerts (Concord, New Hampshire), the Greater New Bedford Concert Series (New Bedford, Massachusetts), Temple Beth El Concert Series (Providence, Rhode Island), the South Shore Concert Association (Massachusetts), as well as Smith and Williams Colleges, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Connecticut College for Women.

Aaron Richmond was a founding member of the Concerts Association of America, founded in 1937 "to meet the pressing problems now confronting the concert-giving field." In 1951, Richmond was elected vice president of the National Association of Concert Managers, which later became the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA).

Richmond took over direction of the Castle Hill Festival in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1964 where he organized the New England debut of violinist Itzhak Perlman and a concert by an eighteen-year-old Peter Serkin.

Richmond also taught piano throughout his career, and for years kept a room adjacent to his business office in which he taught piano.

Honors The French government made Aaron Richmond a Chevalier of The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1961, and the West German government gave him the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1962 for his role in the cultural exchange program.