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Richard Vella's diverse output includes compositions for orchestra, large and small ensembles, choir, film, music theatre, burlesque cabaret, site-specific performances, and popular music genres. Having received up to 30 commissions, much of his music has been performed and recorded nationally and internationally, with many key ensembles having recorded his works for the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Richard Vella's feature film music score 'Travelling Light' (2003) received the nomination 'Best Music for a feature Film' by the Australian Film Institute. Other film credits include 'Light Years', 'Parklands', 'Renzo Piano: piece by piece' (for which he won the 1999 Australian Screen Composer's Award for best music for a documentary.

Vella's interest in music and its relationship to image, text and performance can be seen in his investigations into new opera, cabaret and music theatre. He was founding artistic director of Calculated Risks Opera Productions. Calculated Risks has premiered three of his major works, 'Tales of Love' (1991/2002), The Last Supper (1993), and 'Bodysongs: the fatman tour (1998). These works have toured nationally and internationally in various formats

Richard Vella has held many professorial consultative positions with various universities in Australia. From 2007 to 2019, he was Chair and Professor of Music at the University of Newcastle Conservatorium of Music. From 2008 to 2013 he was also Head of School of Creative Arts at the University of Newcastle. From 2008 to 2013 he was Chair of the National Council of Tertiary Music Schools (NACTMUS, now defunct) and sat on many national advisory boards and groups concerned with tertiary education in the creative and performing arts. Richard Vella currently holds a Professorial adjunct position with the School of Music at the University of Western Australia. In 2022 he became Chair of the Academic Board for SAE University College.

His book 'Musical Environments: a manual for Listening, Improvising and Composing' originally published by Currency Press (2000), was later republished by Boosey and Hawkes, UK, for the northern hemisphere with the new title 'Sounds in Time Sounds in Space'. In 2021, he co-authored 'The Music Export Business: born global' published by Routledge, UK. In 1982 he co-founded New Music Articles with Rainer Linz. From 1997 to 2001, Vella was general editor for music with Currency Press, Australia. In that capacity he instigated publications on Australian music with titles in the areas of music research, biography, composition, pedagogy and performance. Publications discussing his performance work are 'Arias: Recent Australian Music Theatre' Redhouse Editions, 1997; 'The Oxford Dictionary of Australian Music', Oxford University Press, 1998; and 'The Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia', Currency House, 2003.

​Richard Vella directed the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research group Collaborative Environments for Creative Arts Research (CECAR) from 2013 to 2019. As well as the successful supervision of many PhD students, the research activities in CECAR embraced music and phenomenology, performance, composition, music production, interactive technologies, artscience intersections and the music industry. His interest in art and science relationships began in 1992 when he devised and implemented a pioneering interdisciplinary postgraduate and undergraduate music program within the School of Mathematics, Physics, Computing and Electronics at Macquarie University. This pioneering program attracted researchers from all over the university who wanted to develop new approaches to music research at the university level. The music program laid foundations for the later established Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies within the Faculty of Arts. His research group CECAR was awarded in 2015 an Australia Research Council Linkage grant in partnership with Monash University, the Australasian Performing Rights Association and the Australia Council for the Arts. The project investigates the cultural and export value of the Australian music export. The industry report for this project was completed in July 2019. The report can be found at https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/research/born-global. Through CeCAR he was the artistic director of the International Space Time Concerto Competition (2012), a cutting edge concerto competition that embraces historical practices with new innovations in performance.

More information about Richard Vella can be found at https://www.richardvella.net/

Richard Vella — current to July 2025