George Ritchie

Biography

George Ritchie has performed to critical acclaim throughout the United States and Canada.  He has been a featured artist and lecturer at National Conventions of the American Guild of Organists and at the International Congress of Organists in Montreal. Through his performances and recordings, critics have recognized him as one of the leading interpreters of the organ music of J.S. Bach, with comments such as:  "This is Bach as Bach intended his music to be heard" (The Diapason); "These performances are ripe with a depth of scholarship, musicality, and knowledge" (The American Organist); and "This is certainly the finest Bach performance I have heard in a long while" (England's The Organ).

His set of eleven CD’s, surveying the complete organ works of J.S. Bach, has now been released and has received international praise. At the midway point of the recording project, Simon Fitzgerald (The Organ) wrote“…once the remaining volumes are released I know that all other discs of Bach in my collection will be obsolete."  Recorded on significant recently built American organs based on organs of Bach's time, these recordings are now available on the Raven label. His recordings for Titanic include Organ Works of J.S. Bach, Four New American Organs by Bedient, and New Music for Organ and Percussion, with Albert Romeo, percussionist.

Dr. Ritchie is co-author with George Stauffer of the book Organ Music: Modern and Early, published by Oxford University Press. He is in frequent demand throughout North America for lecture-demonstrations, workshops and master classes, often focusing on Bach performance practices and on modern and early playing techniques.  He has been an adjudicator for national organ playing competitions.

George Ritchie is Professor Emeritus of Organ at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. While at Nebraska, he received the university-wide Annis Chaiken Sorensen Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities. Before coming to Nebraska, he was Chapel Organist at Duke University.  A native of California, he has bachelor’s and master's degrees from the University of Redlands.  He also holds the Master of Music degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and the Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University.  In addition, he has done specialized study in Frankfurt under a German Government Grant with the eminent Bach specialist Helmut Walcha and in Paris with the acclaimed French organist André Isoir.  He was also a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at Harvard University, studying with the noted Bach scholar Christoph Wolff.  His organ teachers in the U.S. have been Raymond Boese, Leslie Spelman, Robert Baker, Vernon de Tar and Clyde Holloway.

Current as of August 2007