Richard Rentsch was born in Switzerland. He initially studied at the Jazz School in Bern and at the Dick Grove School of Music in Los Angeles before completing his piano studies at the Conservatory of Music in Lausanne.

This multiple training has enabled him to explore the world of music as a performing musician, a composer of jazz and classical music, a music teacher and an artistic director.

He has played the piano in different jazz bands and jazz rock bands throughout Switzerland and the United States. For the Antoine Livio programme on Radio Swiss Romande he has accompanied several singers as well as performing as a soloist and the recommendation of Maria Métral participated in the 40th Anniversary of Swiss Romande Television.

In addition, he has composed music for the theatre, a musical comedy, a song “Hope” in homage of children, commercial jingles and electronic music. He has written some jazz standards, several sacred composition for choir, orchestra, a capella and he is particularly interested in this music. He is enriched by this diverse interest in different kinds of music.
As a hommage to Mozart, Richard Rentsch has created a work for ballet, choir and orchestra to complement the six unfinished sections of Mozart’s Requiem. It was premiered at the Thalia Theatre in Budapest in 2002 and a revised version will be presented at the National Theatre in Prague in 2006. He is currently contemplating composing a requiem mass, an Ave Maria for soprano, choir and orchestra and an opera in German, the Hyena.

During his career, he has given jazz-piano lessons in Thierry Lang’s class at the Montreux Conservatory, in Richard Pizzorno’s class at the Fribourg Conservatory, in Gaspard Glaus’s class at the Lausanne School of Jazz “EJMA” and at the American School in Leysin. From 1989 to 1995, he taught music at the Elementary School Arnold Reymond in Lausanne and since 1991, he has continued to share his passion for music with pupils at Lausanne’s Beaulieu High School.

In Addition to these activities, he arranges the “Semaines Musicales” in Cran Montana in the Swiss Canton of Valais.