Anthony De Ritis

Anthony Paul De Ritis, Professor and Chair of the Music Department, maintains a courtesy appointment with the Asian Studies program in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities.

De Ritis is a composer who has been working with Chinese and Korean traditional instruments in acoustic and electroacoustic contexts since 1999. In Fall 2011, De Ritis was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in residence at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM, 中央音乐学院)(2011), China’s leading conservatory of music. Since then, De Ritis has been invited to be a master of Beijing’s DeTao Masters Academy in the cultural and creative industries, and frequently offers lectures and master classes in several Beijing academic institutions, including the Central Conservatory of Music, China Conservatory of Music（中国音乐学院), Beijing Contemporary Music Academy (北京现代音乐研修学院), the Communication University of China（中国传媒大学), and at the new x-lab within the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University（清华大学), where De Ritis and his D’Amore-McKim School of Business colleague, John Friar, offered x-lab’s first ever 3-day workshop, “Managing Creativity for Innovation”. De Ritis is now a member of Tsinghua’s United Design Center.

His work with pipa virtuosi Min Xiao-Fen and Wu Man has led to four of De Ritis’ original compositions for pipa to be published by the Central Conservatory of Music Press in Fall 2015: Ping-Pong, Concerto for Pipa and Chinese Orchestra; Zhongguo Pop for solo pipa; Cherry Blossoms for pipa and two percussion; and Jeu de Paume for pipa and guitar. He will be the first American to ever have his or her works for Chinese traditional instruments published by CCOM.

De Ritis’ work with Korean traditional instruments includes collaboration with South Korea’s “Piri Queen”, Hyosun Kang (also known as “Gamin”) whose recently released album Wind & Stone (2014) includes De Ritis’ Five Movements for Piri & 4-Channel Audio (2011). In May 2012, De Ritis’ music for gayageum and Korean percussion was presented as part of KYOPO: Multiplicity (2012) a multimedia performance expressing evolving identities and cultures in a global context through the lens of Korean ancestry. This performance stems from KYOPO, a photographic and textual project created by Korean American visual artist, CYJO, that was on display as part of the “Asian in America: Portraits of Encounter” exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Additional collaborators included choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess, and composer Benoit Granier.

De Ritis’ music has been performed at numerous locations in Asia, including several times at the Beijing Musicacoustica electronic music festival, Taipei’s Zhong Shan Hall, Beijing’s Yugong Yishan, Seoul’s KT Art Hall, and in March 2015 at the University of Hong Kong’s Lee Shau Kee Hall with the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

De Ritis has been invited to be a founding member of the Editorial Board of SAGE publisher’s new Journal of Global Media and China (GMC), led by the Communication University of China’s MLeague. It will be launched formally at the beginning of 2016 and will be the first international journal initiated by Mainland China in English on studies of China, global media and communications involving close cooperation between East and West. And for the last two years, De Ritis has served as an evaluator of research proposals for the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC), the principal public funding body in Hong Kong to support academic research.

De Ritis has served several times as a judge for the annual performance competition of the Foundation for the Chinese Performing Arts; lectured at Harvard’s Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR, 2012); hosted the “Discourse in Music: Symposium and Concert: A Critical Discussion and Scholarly Exchange of Music Research Between China and the U.S.”, featuring a panel of four musicologists and ethnomusicologists from Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music (2012); lectured on “Chinese and American Cultures of Innovation” at the 3rd Annual IP/Innovation Connection: Challenges in Collaborative Innovation (2014); and presented “An American in Beijing: Composing New Music with Old Instruments” at the University of Michigan’s Confucius Institute (2013). In 2008, De Ritis presented a lecture on “Music as a Means of Intercultural Dialogue” at the 31st Fulbright International Conference “The Interconnected World” in Beijing.

Anthon Paul De Ritis completed his Ph.D. in music composition at the University of California, Berkeley (1997) with an emphasis in computer applications, an M.M. in electronic music composition from Ohio University (1992), and his B.A. in music with a concentration in business administration and a minor in philosophy from Bucknell University. De Ritis also holds an M.B.A. from Northeastern University (2002).