Caleb Richards is a composer, lyric baritone, ethnomusicologist, and multi-instrumentalist. His compositions cover many genres, namely choral, chamber and electroacoustic, all of which demonstrating his unique research-based and ethnomusicological approach to composition, with many of his compositions incorporating elements of non-western musical styles. Other stylistic interests of his include spectralism, serialism and modality.
Caleb studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 2026 with a Bachelor of Arts in Music, where he began to build both an ensemble and solo vocal career; during his time at Cambridge, he was a bass in the Chapel Choir of Queens’ College, Cambridge, a member St John’s Voices from 2023-2024, and in 2024 became a founding member of the Cambridge University Schola Cantorum, with whom he was the 2025-2026 holder of the Andrew Macintosh Memorial Choral Scholarship. Caleb was also a bass choral scholar in the choir of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and the English Martyrs in Cambridge, the centre of East Anglia’s largest Catholic parish. Now a choral scholar at Worcester Cathedral, Caleb is a prolific recitalist and choral soloist, frequently making solo appearances with vocal ensembles throughout England. With a particular interest in the art song of the British Isles, Caleb is passionate about vocal art music that represents folk music, heritage, and culture, in keeping with his background in British and Irish folk music and dance traditions. His choral solo repertoire includes Durufle’s Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs, Dvorak’s Mass in D and S. S. Wesley’s The Wilderness; his recital repertoire includes Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad, Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel and Four Poems by Fredegond Shove, and Britten’s Folksong Arrangements.
Caleb’s work in ethnomusicology is largely focused on music and auralities of the Islamic world, the music of the Indian Subcontinent, and the folk music of Britain and Ireland. Caleb has carried out extensive research on the soundscapes and sonic and musical cultures of Marrakech, Morocco, with a particular interest in sonic communities, aural phenomenology, and musical (auto)exoticism. For the past five years he has been studying the sitar and Hindustani classical music under the tuition of Sheema Mukherjee of the Imagined Village and Transglobal Underground. As well as the sitar, Caleb plays the guitar and the mandolin; as an instrumentalist, Caleb has performed in a diverse range of musical settings, including folk/traditional arts festivals (Shrewsbury Folk Festival, 2022; Festival at the Edge, 2024) and several appearances on the radio (BBC Radio Shropshire; BBC Introducing).
