Richard Mainwaring
Presenter - Musician - Author
Richard is a performing musician, TV presenter, composer and author – with a passion for showing how music works.
A classically-trained multi-instrumentalist, Richard has performed with various orchestras including Phantom of the Opera, Welsh Chamber Orchestra, the Emerald Ensemble, and the BBC Concert Orchestra. As a soloist, Richard has duetted with musicians such as Hugh Laurie and Tom Odell.
Richard has presented more than 50 music films for the BBC’s primetime magazine show The One Show for which he has played drums with Dire Straits, sung barbershop at the International Barbershop Convention, climbed Ben Nevis with a piano (!), invented and conducted his own Ice Orchestra, conducted a Car Horn Concerto at a breakers’ yard, and re-recorded the operatic middle eight from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody at Rockfield Studios. Richard is also a regular music contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show. As a voice-over artist Richard is signed to the agent Monster Voice.
Richard has composed numerous scores for TV. Scores have included BBC1’s The Truth About Antibiotics, three series of the long running obs-doc Animal Airport (Animal Planet/More4), and BAFTA Cymru-nominated One Tribe TV’s Richard Parks’ Extreme Wales. Richard’s music can be heard on channels across the world including BBC, C4, C5, Discovery Channel and Netflix. Outside of TV work, Richard was the first composer to write exclusively for the International Space Station, a 17-minute work which was played back by astronaut Samanta Cristoforetti in the stations’ cupola. As an arranger, Richard has written for the likes of the John Wilson Orchestra, Cerys Matthews, Sir Terry Wogan, Lee Mead and the Quartet Bond. For the BBC’s One Show, Richard has created countless bespoke arrangements and compositions including a mash-up of UK Eurovision hits, a 14-song medley of Elvis hits (which lasted for only 1 minute!) and the Wombles Theme in the style of Tchaikovsky.
Richard has also worked as a string arranger for Goldfrapp’s Charlie Jones, and was one of the leading writers on a celebrity album for BBC Children in Need, recorded at Abbey Road. Richard is signed to music publisher Accorder Music.
Signed to London literary agent Watson Little, Richard is writing his first book, a pop science/music title exploring frequency.