About Me
Dennis Ritz is Professor Emeritus of Shippensburg University. During his twenty-three year tenure at Shippensburg, he restarted and built the Shippensburg University-Community Orchestra into an organization that performed the finest in standard orchestral literature. He also founded and directed the University Woodwind Ensembles program and chaired the Department of Music for nine years.
Ritz has always been in demand as a performer. In Maine, he performed solo English horn for Werner Torkanowsky and the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. Sidney, Maine’s New England Music Camp hired him in 1980 to perform and teach oboe, starting a relationship that expanded into conducting the Concert Orchestra, computerizing all camp operations, and serving two terms as president of the Board of Trustees. He retired from the camp’s Corporation and Board of Directors in 2017. Along the way, he completed the D.M.A. in Orchestral Conducting (Michigan State University) with a scholarship and assistantship as solo English hornist under Leon Gregorian.
Composition, a love that goes back to junior high school, had been set aside for decades under the “tyranny of the urgent,” but arranging a Polish Christmas carol for mezzo soprano, oboe, and piano in 2001 rekindled that interest. The piece eventually became part of his Seven Kolędy for Soprano, Oboe, and Piano that premiered December 2013 at the Polish Embassy in Washington, D.C. Since then, Dr. Ritz has composed many pieces, including six symphonies, and in recent years, he has orchestrated and conducted seven ballets.
Dr. Ritz and his wife Barbara are blessed with a son, David, daughter-in law, Blaire, and two granddaughters, Reagan, seven, and Riley, five. The elder Ritzes are knowledgeable antique collectors and restorers. Barbara is an accomplished gardener and ‘Gammy.’ Dennis is an instrument-rated pilot and ‘Gampy.’
