Richard Ayres (Camelford, Cornwall, 1965) is a British composer who has been living and working in the Netherlands since 1989. Ayres studied composition, electronic music and trombone at Huddersfield Polytechnic. He moved to the Netherlands and obtained a postgraduate certificate in composition at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague with Louis Andriessen. Ayres has been teaching composition at the Royal Conservatoire since 2004. Since graduating, Ayres has been composing for many ensembles and orchestras, including Asko|Schönberg, Ensemble MAE, London Sinfonietta and Klangforum Wien. Ayres has also been building a reputation outside the Netherlands for several years. The Cricket Recovers was praised by press and audience in his native England.

Ayres' music is characterised by a sense of theatricality and narrativity. According to Charlotte Higgins of British newspaper The Guardian, Ayres' music is steeped in drama, like "theatre without text". According to biographer Christopher Fox, Ayres tries to shape musical narratives in a way that engages his audience more directly. Ayres himself says he wants his music to reduce the distance between what we hear outside on the street and the composition, the world of illusion we create. He wants to keep his music human and is not a fan of smooth perfection. One of the ideas Ayres keeps returning to, according to critic Higgins, is that of human failings. In that light, Ayres must have felt like a fish out of water when composing The Cricket Recovers. For The Cricket Recovers, Ayres' won the prestigious South Bank Show Award for Best Opera. Previous awards Ayres has received include the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize, the International Gaudeamus Prize and a Recommendation in the Unesco Rostrum of Composers.