Richard Wilson is an incredibly prolific composer, having over a hundred works for a wide variety of instruments and ensembles. His compositions have been performed by a number of celebrated groups and artists including Dawn Upshaw, the Chicago Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony, and the London Philharmonic. Wilson has received many accolades for his works including an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Creative Arts Award in Music from the City of Cleveland, the Stoeger Award from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Also a renowned pedagogue, Wilson taught at Vassar College for fifty years, where he served as the Mary Conover Mellon Professor of Music.

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, he started out learning piano and cello, with his teachers being Leonard Shure and Ernst Silberstein respectively. In his early musical studies, he studied at the Cleveland Music School Settlement. In 1963, Wilson graduated from Harvard University where he was a recipient of the Frank Huntington Beebe Award. He has been a composer-in-residence with the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992.