leaderboard1 -

James Richard Morris dead at 71

November 20, 2013

James Richard Morris, organist-in-residence since 1994 of Clayton State University’s Spivey Hall, passed away on September 12, of injuries sustained in an automobile accident earlier that week. He was 71. Morris also served as organist at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, Mableton, Georgia.

Born in Atlanta, Richard Morris began his concert career at age 12 as piano soloist with the Atlanta Pops Orchestra, performing the Grieg Piano Concerto at the Fox Theatre before an audience of 5,000 people; he was twice soloist in the Atlanta Symphony Youth Concerts during his high school years.

Morris studied piano at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, earning a bachelor’s degree, and studied further in Vienna, and with Nadia Boulanger in France, returning to the United States in 1965. He earned a master’s of divinity from Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin, and worked as an Episcopal priest.

In the early 1970s, Spivey Hall founder Emilie Spivey introduced him to Virgil Fox, who coached him in developing his concert repertoire. One of the few organists ever to be presented in recital by Carnegie Hall, Morris also soloed with symphony orchestras and toured extensively in the United States and Canada, performing some 50 concerts a season for 25 years. He made numerous recordings and performed for national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists. He gave performances in every Spivey Hall season since the dedication in 1992 of the 4,413-pipe Albert Schweitzer Memorial Organ, custom-built by Fratelli Ruffatti in Padua, Italy, including live broadcasts in November 1992 and August 1996 for public radio’s nationally syndicated program, Performance Today. He also taught at Clayton State University.

Richard Morris is survived by his partner and business/touring manager, Robert J. Serredell, Jr., and his brother and sister-in-law, Ronald and Cynthia Morris. Morris was scheduled to perform at Spivey Hall on Saturday, February 1, 2014. That concert is now being reformed as a memorial concert honoring Morris; program details will be announced at a later date.