Early Years Richard Dancu Trifan is from the first family to have successfully home-schooled their children and won their case with the New Jersey state supreme court; he started his piano and composition studies before the age of three[1] with his father, Daniel S. Trifan, a classical violinist who followed the tutorial model of Leopold Mozart, himself a PhD graduate of Harvard University and the son of Marioara Dancu and Daniel Trifan, immigrants to America from the Carpathian towns of Lancram and Medias in Transylvania. His father was to be the most valuable music teacher Richard would ever have. Richard's mother, Dorothy Lee Trifan-Ridlon, was the daughter of Oscar Ridlon (of Scottish descent) and Leola Montez Grover-Ridlon (Owens), of English descent from the Wellman family who came to America in the 1630's, settling in Lynnfield (Salem village), Massachusetts. Richard, as the youngest child of 3, often tried to emulate and equal the achievements of his older brother Daniel and sister Marioara, themselves also early prodigies in music composition and piano (all having perfect pitch), reading, writing, and speaking on a variety of scientific, political and musical topics before the age of five[2]
Education He received his formal musical education at the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center[3], having studied piano at age 12 with the late Mme. Rosina Lhevinne as well as composition and orchestration. He attended the Horace Mann School[4] at the age of 13 in conjunction with his music studies, Columbia University (freshman year), Fairleigh Dickinson University, and has an MBA in marketing as well as a BBA in management, with information technology and finance.
Awards At the age of eleven, he won the Philadelphia Orchestra Children's Concerts competition along with his brother Daniel, performing the first movement of the 2-piano concerto in D Minor by Poulenc. He was the United States winner of the BMI Student Composer Awards[5] for his first piano suite "Three Epigrams for Piano", an early compositional foray into modern piano literature. Later works would re-emphasize the beauty of the melody and diatonic harmonic structure while remaining unique and un-eclectic, a challenging growth step in a composer's life work.
Recording, Touring and Concerts He went on to work with Natalie Cole as her first musical director, touring with her first band in the United States and Canada. Following this, he joined Bette Midler's new band as keyboardist on her first U.S. tour, encompassing over 30 cities and recording her first live album "Live at Last"[6].
During this time Richard learned the Moog synthesizer from Walter Sear, one of Dr. Robert Moog's founding partners in New York, and worked the Moog synthesizer into many hit records with the Village People (YMCA[7], In the Navy) and other popular artists[8], including jazz great Stanley Turrentine[9]; [10]. He used the console Moog Series IIIC with Walter Sear's EML PolyBox which split the Moog sound oscillators into all the notes of the diatonic scale in real time, developing a unique poly-tonal improvisational / soloist capability with these two instruments used together in real time.
Opera and Theater Richard's first opera "The Global Opera" is a five-act epic set to an original story of 4 virtuous characters, who (through their immortality) journey through 8 centuries of the human condition in Europe and Asia. Each act is sung in a different language, that of the country through which the characters were traveling, a concept never before tried on the operatic stage. This concept caused him to be interested in the Eurasia Center[11], a Washington D.C.-based non-profit think tank already established, which he would later join in 2008 as the VP of government relations, marketing, and its cultural liaison. As a music composer and publisher with ASCAP, he also was musical director and wrote songs for the off-Broadway musical “Star-Crossed Lovers” (about the creative process of Shakespeare) and other emerging theatrical works. For Richard the boundary between opera and theater was always elusive, and challenged him to create a true "multi-media" opera and adding the 4th dimension of time to the work.
Advertising, Government and Business Education Richard utilized the Moog synthesizer extensively in the advertising world through over 150 TV and radio soundtracks to achieve notable special effects and attention-getting tonal qualities. In addition to then employing the Moog and other new keyboards to continuing new works, he completed his Masters in marketing and perfected his business skills through varying global logistics challenges, and is now the Eurasia Center’s Vice President of Government Relations and Business Marketing, focusing on the Eurasia Business Coalition[12] and how its mission for the greater good of American and Eastern European / Asian businesses is augmented and enriched through global exchange of culture. American and European/Asian business relationships, he feels, need to be endorsed at the government level and whose "win-win" economics (through advanced logistics) on both supply and demand side can often be common ground to defuse political tensions between nations. Staying always current on emerging technologies and ERP applications such as SAP, he also gives benefit recitals of his works for the advancement of other arts such as painting and sculpture, and will shortly be working to advance orphans' causes through humanitarian events with the Eurasia Center.
Other Works In addition to his operatic and theater work, Richard is also a composer for the piano, varying string and woodwind sonatas, and the Moog synthesizer as a futuristic instrument within the classical orchestra. Through his LLC, Richard has also consulted with publishers such as Scholastic, Inc. and Pearson, Inc. to promote the market power of education through books as well as online methods, drawing on his learned knowledge of education from his mother Dorothy's direct home-schooling and her Master's degree in education from Columbia.
Acknowledgement to Parents and Family Richard acknowledges that his life has been exceedingly fortunate due to his parents, loving family upbringing and early education. "The first 5 years of life determine 90% of what we all can or cannot become". Although a firm believer of higher education and subsequent free choices in our lives, Richard advocates the immeasurable contribution that parents bestow on their children through tireless love and giving of their time to enrich their child. Richard is working on a book about his parents and the ideal family structure they championed.