Richard James Burgess Ph.D. began his career in recorded music as a studio drummer and percussionist for EMI Records in New Zealand. He went on to enjoy international success as a studio musician, major label producer, engineer, composer, artist, and manager of both producers and artists garnering many multi-platinum, platinum and gold albums to his name. Richard authored The Art of Record Production (pub. Music Sales) in 1994, and recently updated it for a fourth edition as The Art of Music Production in addition to penning his latest book entitled The History of Music Production (both published by Oxford University Press). He lectures on music production, the music business and music career strategies. He is credited with co-designing the Simmons SDSV drum synthesizer, coining the term “New Romantic” (when he was producing Spandau Ballet in the early eighties) and producing one of the proto-house records (1985’s “Trapped” by Colonel Abrams). He is known for his pioneering electronic music work in the seventies being one of the earliest users of the MC-8 microcomposer (Landscape’s From The Tearooms of Mars…) and the Fairlight CMI sampler (Kate Bush’s Never Forever). Richard was educated at Berklee College of Music, Boston, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London and The University of Glamorgan, Wales. He has been Vice President of the Washington DC chapter of the Recording Academy, co-chair of the DC Chapter of the Academy’s Producer and Engineer Wing and a member of the P&E Wing’s national steering committee. Additionally, he is Joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal on the Art of Record Production, which is based out of the London College of Music. For the past thirteen years he has overseen revenue generation at the award-winning Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label where he is now the Associate Director for Business Strategies.