Richard Fairfax is a native New Yorker who has participated in a wide spectrum of cultural activities throughout the last five decades. He was a sideman in professional bands, occasionally backing up star performers like the Four Tops and Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes. He studied music performance and composition with Makanda Ken McIntyre and Warren Smith, playing with them and other exceptional musicians on the New York City jazz scene throughout the 1980s and ’90s.  Mr. Fairfax collaborated with socially, politically conscious theater-poetry-dance-music groups, including The Sedition Ensemble, Elliot Bratton’s Message, and the We Owe Somebody Collective. Over many years of employment at ASCAP, Mr. Fairfax performed his original compositions with musically talented co-workers for special events. In Harlem where Mr. Fairfax resides, he produced and performed the “Freedom Summer 2008” series, which featured some of his works with community discussions of historic events and their contemporary relevance. Since retirement from ASCAP,  Mr. Fairfax continues to write, publish and perform his own compositions, collaborating often with the cyborg species Automata Africanus and sometimes with the finest human musicians.