Friday the 13th

Richard Zencker's first piano lessons were at the French School of Music in Plainfield, New Jersey; later, he also took up the violin. He studied piano, music theory and composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and later was active as an amateur violinist, violist and program annotator with various community and semiprofessional orchestras in New Jersey, New York, Virginia and Texas.

As a professional musician, he has worked as a pianist, organist, and in musical instrument sales. He was Music Director for classical music programming for several years in the early 1980s for WTJU-FM in Charlottesville, VA and later worked for WSKG-FM, an NPR station in Binghamton, NY. In the late 1980s he was Operations Director for KUHF, the NPR station in Houston, TX, where he developed the weekly radio program "The Piano Bench" and presented classical music daily. He currently is employed as a computer programmer and analyst.