Artists
Anthony Paul De Ritis
Composer | Boston, USA
“With artists like Busoni, or what someone like Russolo was trying to do with “The Art of Noises,” there’s this whole issue of thinking about why composition needs renewal. I think that’s what Anthony is thinking about.”
– Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, in BPM Culture magazine, “Magna Cum Loud” (6-24-2004)
Music technologist and composer Anthony Paul De Ritis was born on Long Island, New York on August 13, 1968. He arrived at Boston’s Northeastern University in 1998 and is currently Chair of the Department of Music and Director of the Multimedia Studies Program. Previously he taught Musical Acoustics at the San Francisco Conservatory as a Collegiate Professor.
De Ritis’ music has been called “cutting-edge,” “revolutionary,” “groundbreaking and earth-shattering,” “ultra-exotic,” and “really cool.” His works have been performed in Europe, North America, Asia, and most recently, Russia. On June 11, 2002 he was presented as a composer and performer (violist) at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York; De Ritis was also required to fill in for maestro Lukas Foss who had taken ill. This performance included De Ritis’ composition Dust and Roses for narrator, viola and guitar, fourteen settings of poems by his father, Paul A. De Ritis. This work was reprised at the 2ème Festival de Musique de Sancerre, France, in a version for flute, harp and viola (August 2002).
De Ritis is widening the palette of the orchestral tradition, imbuing it with a new kind of hall-of-mirrors logic that could pave the way to a submersion of the orchestra in a world of technology.
– Kyle Gann, The Village Voice (10-12-2004)
De Ritis’ Devolution, a Concerto for DJ and Symphony Orchestra, has received significant recognition on both coasts, including a segment by Tech TV. It received its west coast premiere under the direction of Michael Morgan and the Oakland East Bay Symphony (March 2004); the east coast premiere was under the baton of Jung-Ho Pak and the New Haven Symphony (Sept. 2004) – both performances featured Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid as the soloist.
“De Ritis has helped construct the bridge between musical worlds.”
– Andrew Gilbert, San Jose Mercury News (3-18-2004)
De Ritis’ electroacoustic work Plum Blossoms (1999), based on samples of the Chinese pipa virtuoso, Min
Xiao-Fen, received its premiere at the International Computer Music Conference in Beijing, China, and was later the basis for a “live” version for pipa, strings, glockenspiel and electronic sounds commissioned and performed by the San Diego Symphony (2000). Presently he is completing a solo pipa work for Wu Man, and will have the premiere of his Ping-Pong, a Concerto for Pipa and Chinese Orchestra, on December 11, 2004 with the Taipei Chinese Orchestra in Taipei, Taiwan with Min Xiao-Fen as the soloist.
“…an audio alchemist’s wet dream”
– East Bay Express (Berkeley, CA) in “Spooky 7th, Back that Classical Up” (3-17-2004)
Many of De Ritis’ compositions engage the use of amplified instrumentation and orchestration borrowed from popular and jazz music idioms and/or the use of interactive performance technology with the Max/MSP software language. While composer-in-residence at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the World Youth Symphony Orchestra premiered his work Amsterdam for large orchestra and electronics featuring a Buchla Lightning II conductor’s baton as the performance controller (August 2004). Additional performances include Transparencies (2001) for guitar, viola and electronic sounds at the VI International Guitar/ Congress in Corfu, Greece; and Eleggua 1, 2 and 3 (2001) interactive works for instruments and computer at the IX Festival Internacional de Musica Electroacustica in Havana, Cuba. His compositions and performances have received reviews in national and international papers, including the Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, New Haven Register, Classical Guitar (England), La Nouveau Rèpublique (France) and Le Nazione (Italy).
De Ritis’ next large project is a full-length music drama titled The Taking of Miss Janie based on the play by African American playwright, educator and activist, Ed Bullins, a musical collaboration with composer and Guitar Player magazine Associate Editor, Jude Gold, to be directed by Del Lewis, Director, Northeastern University’s Center for the Arts.
“…absorbing play of texture and exciting use of color”
– Robert Commanday, San Francisco Chronicle (1-20-93)
De Ritis completed his Ph.D. in Music Composition at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Richard Felciano, Jorge Liderman, and Edwin Dugger, and worked with David Wessel at Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) (1992-1997). He received his M.M. in Electronic Music Composition from Ohio University under Mark Phillips (1990-1992); and his B.A. in Music with a concentration in Business Administration from Bucknell University, studying composition under William Duckworth, Jackson Hill and Kyle Gann, and philosophy with Richard Fleming (1986-1990). De Ritis engaged in summer study at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France under Phillipe Manoury, Tristan Murail, and Gilbert Amy (1991, 1992), the University of Southern California (1990) and New York University (1989).
Other significant accomplishments include his contracting and managing of 112 musicians for the American premiere of Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s Ocean 1-95 with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company presented by Berkeley’s Cal Performances (1996), and his score for the Macintosh computer game, Step On It, which won the 1997 MacWorld Arcade Game of the Year.
He is the founder and lead developer of the Online Conservatory collaboration between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Northeastern University, which was featured in the New York Times, the Chronicle for Higher Education, Newsweek, Symphonymagazine and the Boston Globe. The Online Conservatory allows viewers to explore BSO programs in-depth before their performances.
De Ritis also holds a certificate in Internet Technologies and a Masters in Business Administration with an emphasis in High Tech.
Since 2000, De Ritis has spent his summers conducting Italian opera and finding his soul in Siena, Italy, the country of his father’s birth.