Discipline: Music Composition

Rick Baitz

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1982, 1987, 1988
More: rickbaitz.com
Rick Baitz is an American composer who writes for film, television, theatre, and the concert hall. Baitz was raised in Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, and Durban, South Africa, and attended the Manhattan School of Music for his undergraduate and graduate studies before completing a Ph.D. at Columbia University. Baitz has scored a variety of award-winning films, including Who Cares About Kelsey, HBO’s The Vagina Monologues, the PBS documentary Body & Soul: Diana and Kathy, the Sundance-honored The Education of Shelby Knox, and a collection of national geographic specials including The New Chimpanzees, Heart of Africa, and Looters. His concert works have been played across Europe and the Americas, and he was the head of the graduate composition program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He currently lives in New York and serves as the founder and director of BMI’s advanced film scoring workshop, “Composing for the Screen.”

Studios

Sprague-Smith

Rick Baitz worked in the Sprague-Smith studio.

In January of 1976, the original Sprague-Smith Studio — built in 1915–1916 and funded by music students of Mrs. Charles Sprague-Smith of the Veltin School — was destroyed by fire. Redesigned by William Gnade, Sr., a Peterborough builder, the fieldstone structure was rebuilt the same year from the foundation up, reusing the original fieldstone. A few…

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