Biography
Raised in Los Angeles, Rio de Janiero, Brazil and Durban, South Africa, Rick has worked as a deckhand on a dredger in Durban and a cabbie in New York. Much of his music reflects his early exposure to the dance rhythms he absorbed in his travels.
Recent film credits include the award-winning PBS documentary “Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy”, HBO’s “The Vagina Monologues” and “Life Afterlife”, the Sundance-honored “The Education of Shelby Knox”, National Geographic’s acclaimed Specials “The New Chimpanzees”, “Heart of Africa” and “Looters”, and Atom Films’ “Baby Steps”, starring Kathy Bates.
A recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the Earle Hagan/BMI Film Scoring Workshop, Rick has been nominated for the American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters Music Awards and has won several Meet the Composer Awards. His concert works have been performed across the US, Europe and Latin America, with his Juilliard-commissioned quintet “River of January” winning the Delius Composition Contest and termed a “glowing jewel of a new score” by the NY Times. Recently, Baitz composed and produced the CD “Sound Meditations for Healing”, released by The Relaxation Company, and completed his third collaboration with the award-winning director Caroline Kava on her new film, “Jesus, Maria.” In the Fall of 2009, Rick’s string quartet, “Chthonic Dances”, is scheduled to be performed at the Grand Canyon Music Festival by the renowned ensemble Ethel.
Rick received his Doctorate in Composition from Columbia University in New York, and also studied at Manhattan School of Music and Tanglewood. During the 2007-2008 season, he divided his time between New York and Chicago, where he was Director of Music Composition Studies and Lead Instructor in Film Scoring at Columbia College Chicago. Currently he maintains his New York-based production company, Rick Baitz Music, and is the Director of “Composing for the Screen”, an advanced filmscoring mentoring program sponsored by BMI.