Richmond Culp was in Mississippi Boychoir from 2001 through 2003 when he was in the sixth and seventh grades.  He had the distinction of being the Boychoir’s emissary to Seattle to sing Eudora’s Fable: The Shoe Bird with the Seattle Symphony’s Northwest premier of that work, which Mississippi Boychoir commissioned Samuel Jones to write.  The work is based on Eudora Welty’s book, The Shoe Bird.  Jones,  a native Mississippian, is Composer-in-Residence at the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

Richmond and his father flew to Seattle the weekend after Mississippi Boychoir completed a six-performance premier tour of The Shoe Bird in Mississippi, and he sang in the 50-minute work of lively music and narration with the Northwest Boychoir. 
 
A sixth grader at the time of The Shoe Bird,  Richmond is now in the freshman class at Jones’ (and Conductor Margaret Thomas’) alma mater, Millsaps College.  On February 27. 2009, Mississippi Boychoir performed for music students at Millsaps and Belhaven Colleges in collaboration with the choir’s visiting consultant, Dr. Julian Ackerley, from the Tuscan Arizona Boys Chorus.  Ackerley presented a workshop to familiarize students with methods of vocal technique for boys and young men, using Mississippi Boychoir as a demonstration choir.

After the workshop Richmond came onstage to greet and meet current choirboys.  He found one friend left from his days in the choir—Seth, who entered the choir one year before Richmond.  Both of them were participants in the choir’s festival experience during the summer of 2003, when members of the choir traveled to England for a festival at Canterbury Cathedral and in London.