Richard Aaker Trythall (born July 25, 1939) is an American and Italian composer and pianist of contemporary classical music.Trythall was born on July 25, 1939 in Knoxville, Tennessee,[1] the younger brother of composer Gilbert Harry Trythall. His family, related to composer Edvard Grieg, has Welsh and Norwegian ancestry, and moved to the United States from Norway. He attended Central High School in Knoxville and in 1958 he enrolled at the University of Tennessee, where he studied under David Van Vactor graduating with a Bachelor of Music in 1961.[2] His interest in composition was fostered by Van Vactor, at the time conductor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and founder of the University of Tennessee School of Music. He was then admitted to Princeton University in 1961 where he studied under Earl Kim, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Edward T. Cone obtaining a Master of Fine Arts in 1963. He completed his music studies attending, that same year, advanced composition courses at the Berlin University of the Arts where he studied with Boris Blacher under a Fulbright-Hays Scholarship.[3] Trythall was part of the group of David Van Vactor's notable students named the Van Vactor Five together with Gilbert Harry Trythall,[4] David P. Sartor, Jesse Ayers, and Doug Davis. Career[edit] Trythall was invited by Lukas Foss and Lejaren Hiller to join the faculty of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts of the State University of New York at Buffalo where he taught from 1972