Richard Yongjae O'Neill

Violist Richard O'Neill is among the world's most successful exponents of his instrument. He is especially popular in his ancestral country of South Korea. O'Neill was born in Sequim, Washington, on December 31, 1978. His mother was a Korean war orphan who suffered mental disabilities as a result of malnutrition. O'Neill was raised by his mother's foster parents, from whom he received his surname, and he has sometimes used the name Richard Yongjae O'Neill. He took up the violin at age five and switched to the viola at a teacher's suggestion. His musical ambitions were supported by his grandmother, who drove him to Seattle and across the border into Canada for lessons. When O'Neill was 15, he enrolled at the North Carolina High School of Visual and Performing Arts. He moved on to the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, earning an undergraduate degree there and then going on for a master's degree at the Juilliard School in New York. There, he became the first violist ever to earn the school's coveted Artist Diploma. His principal mentors were Donald McInnes, Karen Tuttle, and Paul Neubauer. O'Neill has given recitals at many of the world's most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Louvre Museum in Paris. His orchestral concerto credits include appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony, and the Seoul Philharmonic. O'Neill has been especially popular in South Korea, where his albums sell in the tens or hundreds of thousands, and where he was the subject of a five-hour television documentary. He is the founder of Seoul's Ditto Festival, an annual event intended to introduce chamber music to a broader Korean public. O'Neill's recording debut came on the Centaur label, where he was featured on an album of chamber music by Richard Muczynski in 2004. He was signed to the Decca label and released the recital Winter Journey in 2007, and has continued to record for the Decca/Universal family of labels, including Deutsche Grammophon. In 2020, he was heard on a recording of Christopher Theofanidis' Viola Concerto on the Albany label. O'Neill has taught at various U.S. schools, including Brown University and the University of California at Los Angeles. He has lent his name and music-making to charities, including Oxfam and the Special Olympics, serves as a Korean Red Cross Goodwill Ambassador, and runs marathons to raise money for charity. ~ James Manheim