Richard DeRosa received a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Composition in 2015 for his big band composition “Neil”. He is a tenured full professor and Director of Jazz Composition and Arranging at the University of North Texas. In 2022, he premiered his 8-movement work titled Life in Poetry and Music which featured world-renowned vocalist Kurt Elling.

Since 2001, Mr. DeRosa has arranged and conducted music for Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra featuring Renйe Fleming, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Annie Ross, Abbey Lincoln, and Toots Thielemans among others. He was a featured arranger for the Wynton With Strings concert and contributed seven arrangements for Stephen Sondheim’s A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair starring Bernadette Peters and premiered by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. More recent large projects included Bernstein at 100 and Joey Alexander with Strings.

Since 2012 Mr. DeRosa has conducted and arranged music for the West Deutsche Rundfunk (WDR) Big Band in Cologne, Germany, and served as its chief conductor from 2014-16. Amongst those projects, Mr. DeRosa arranged and conducted the music of featured legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter on the CD recording My Personal Songbook (2015), the CD Rediscovered Ellington (2017) that features Garry Dial and Dick Oatts, and the CD Crossing Borders which featured Richie Beirach and Gregor Huebner. Other projects with world-renowned artists include Patti Austin, Kurt Elling, Joshua Redman, Stefon Harris, the New York Voices, Marvin Stamm and Bill Mays, Ola Onabulй, and Warren Vachй.