Richard Rho (노정진) is the tenor saxophonist of Prelude, the Berklee-born Korean jazz band that debuted on Sony in 2005, and a full-time professor at Kwangwoon University in Seoul. He is credited as Richard Rho on Discogs and in English-language press; Korean newspapers write the same name as 리차드 로 or 리처드 로, a 2020 television item introduced him as 노정진 (리차드 로), and a 2020 listing for a Korean Cultural Center New York concert spelled it Richard Ro. A 2006 interview even printed him as 리처드 노. He plays tenor and soprano saxophone and clarinet, and he has been a founding member of one of the longest-running working groups in Korean jazz: Prelude started in Boston in 2003, and in October 2026 the Korean press still described it as a band in its 23rd year.

His own biography, published by his reed and mouthpiece sponsors, says he was born in South Korea and moved to the United States while in elementary school, and that he took up the saxophone in seventh grade. A regional Korean newspaper adds that he grew up in the United States, graduated from Glendale High School and received the Presidential Education Award there. No source gives his birth date or birthplace; a January 2006 interview printed his age as 27, which in Korean counting puts his birth around 1979 or 1980, and the header does not guess. He then entered the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where his sponsor biography says he studied saxophone with George Garzone, and later earned a Master of Music at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music on a Jamey Aebersold scholarship, studying with Tom Walsh and David Baker. Those teachers are named in his own biography only.

Prelude came out of Berklee. The English-language Korea JoongAng Daily wrote in January 2006 that its members had met there as music majors and formed the band in 2002, while Korean reports consistently give 2003; the paper described a six-man group, with three members raised in the United States and three who came from Korea, and said that the saxophonists Charles Lee and Richard Rho "consider themselves Korean-Americans". The pianist and leader Heean Ko (고희안) later told Hankyoreh how the name was chosen. The students were Korean Berklee players looking for a band name; "jazz ambassador" came up and did not stick, and Rho, who lived in the United States, suggested the name of the car he drove, a Prelude. It suggested a beginning and the overture of Korean jazz, and the band kept it.

The band's first album, Croissant, came out on Sony BMG Korea in December 2005. Its lineup then was Ko on piano, 최원석 on alto saxophone, Jinbae Choi (최진배) on bass, Charles Lee on soprano and tenor saxophone, Rho on tenor saxophone and Abraham Lagrimas Jr. on drums. The JoongAng Daily reported that it had sold more than 1,000 copies, a respectable number for a young jazz band in Korea, after a month of concerts to promote it, and that the group had a Blue Note date in Manhattan booked for May 2006; Yonhap, in a January 2006 interview with the band, gave April. In 2008 the Busan Ilbo quoted the bandleader Heean Ko saying that the 2006 Blue Note booking had been set and then cancelled. Prelude's second album, Breezing Up, followed in April 2007. That year the band played the Jarasum International Jazz Festival, and in 2008 the Seoul Jazz Festival, where the Korea Times listed Rho on tenor saxophone beside Ko, Lee, Choi and Lagrimas. A fourth album, Both Sides of Prelude, came out in November 2009, and in the same month the band was invited to the Asian-American Jazz Festival in Los Angeles. By February 2010 최원석 had left the group, Lee had gone to pursue a solo career and further study, and the saxophonist 김지석, a graduate of the University of New Orleans, had joined; Lagrimas, living in the United States, was replaced for that concert by the drummer Han Woong-won (한웅원), who is the quartet's drummer today.

The working band is now a quartet: Ko, Rho, Choi and Han. A fifth album, 5th Movement, carries a 2010 copyright, and the quartet has made two projects with the Gyeonggi minyo singer Jeon Young-rang (전영랑), Fly In in January 2014 and Fly-In Vol. 2: Modern Jass in December 2020, the second built on popular songs of 1930s and 1940s Seoul. On the first, Discogs credits him by name on saxophone, with Ko on piano, Choi on bass and Han on drums. With the sorikkun Lee Heemoon (이희문) the band made 한국남자 in 2017 and a second volume in 2020. At the K-Music Festival on September 24, 2017, in the Elgar Room of the Royal Albert Hall in London, Prelude supported Lee, with Rho on tenor and acting as master of ceremonies. A concert listing for the Korean Cultural Center in New York in October 2020 put the quartet in an online concert with Lee.

Outside the band he also works under his own name. A Gwangju concert was billed as a jazz-talk programme for Richard Rho and Heean Ko, and the Korean press has written of a Richard Rho Quartet. On August 31, 2022 he led a trio with a pianist and the bassist 류형곤 at the Sejong Cultural Arts Center in Sejong City, in a programme titled Jazz Bistro Blue in Paris, billed as traditional-style jazz on soprano and tenor saxophone. The Korea Times listed him on saxophone for a Ronn Branton Jazz Christmas concert at Jang Cheon Art Hall in southern Seoul on December 24, 2012. A June 2013 report in the Dong-A Ilbo said members of Prelude had taken the piano, bass, drums and saxophone categories of a readers' poll, with Rho the winner on saxophone, and his sponsor biography says he was voted most popular saxophonist in the Jazz People Magazine readers' poll in 2012 and 2013. The same biography says he toured with the soprano saxophonist Jo-sumi in 2015 and appeared as an actor and musician in two films; neither claim is confirmed elsewhere. In January 2020 he appeared on the MBN programme 우리 다시 사랑할 수 있을까, where he played "Over the Rainbow" for another guest and talked about the instrument.

The band has stayed busy into 2026. It played the opening night of the Curtain Call Garden at Seoul's Sejong Center on October 15, 2026, where the Korean press noted that the group still plays Sundays at the Seoul club Janus, where it made its debut, and reviewers singled out Rho's soprano saxophone. A coffee concert with Jeon Young-rang at the Incheon Culture and Arts Center was announced for July 15, 2026, and in October 2024 the band joined the former Wonder Girls singer Sunye for a concert in Hwaseong. His sponsors describe him as a full-time professor at Kwangwoon University, and a 2020 entertainment report called him a professor there, a Berklee graduate and a member of Prelude.

What is not known is a good deal. There is no record released under his own name, and no source gives his birth date or place, his Indiana years or the year he joined the Kwangwoon faculty. Prelude's discography carries "over 10 albums on Sony" in his own biography, while an Edaily concert notice counts eight regular albums and three project albums; the albums that can be named and dated are listed in the Full Discography.

His sound is that of a mainstream, melodic tenor and soprano saxophonist working in a band that deliberately aims at an accessible audience. In a 2006 interview, printed under the name 리처드 노, he said the band did not want to insist on an orthodox style or burden the listener, that players who are not Black would only sound unnatural trying to play Black American jazz, and that they wanted music that pleased both the players and the audience. The repertoire the press names fits that: "Georgia On My Mind", "Four Brothers" and "Without a Song" on Croissant; film themes such as "Everyone Says I Love You", "Tango Apasionado", "Falling Slowly" and "Merry-Go-Round of Life" in the 2009 and 2010 concerts; "What a Wonderful World" as an encore in 2026; and, with Jeon Young-rang and Lee Heemoon, Korean folk and sori material arranged for a jazz quartet. Asked in the Hankyoreh interview which song to start with from Fly-In Vol. 2, Rho named "어느 사월에", the slow waltz by Ko that is its title song, and called it the most beautiful melody in Ko's work.

His teachers on his own account are George Garzone, Tom Walsh and David Baker. No review or interview found describes his tone or phrasing in detail, so this section stops at what the press and the releases show.