Speed Art Museum Louisville, KY
John Ritz
Associate Professor of Music and Coordinator of Composition and Creative Studies, the University of Louisville
The Last Waltz— Hot Mics and Tall Stacks: How a (or The) Band Gets a Big Sound
Program Description
On Thanksgiving Day, 1976, the Band took to the stage in San Francisco to perform their farewell concert with an ensemble of performers and over 300 workers called in to put on the once-in-a-lifetime show. In this talk, John Ritz, Associate Professor of Music at the University of Louisville, will explore the science and technology that takes the powerful but contained sound of a band on stage and amplifies it to a crowd of thousands. From the diaphragm of a mic, through its copper cable, out of the magnets of a speaker, and into the drums of our ears, the amplification of sound involves an intricate translation between soundwaves and electrical signals. THE LAST WALTZ begins with the directive “This film should be played loud!” Here we will learn how we can get so loud, and why it’s so enthralling.
Presented At
Speed Art Museum Louisville, KY
Film Synopsis
A film account and presentation of the final concert of The Band.
Seventeen years after joining forces as the backing band for rockabilly cult hero Ronnie Hawkins, Canadian roots rockers The Band call it quits with a lavish farewell show at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom on Nov. 25, 1976. Filmed by Martin Scorsese, this documentary features standout performances by rock legends such as Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell and Muddy Waters, as well as interviews tracing the group's history and discussing road life.
About the Speaker
John Ritz is Associate Professor of Music and Coordinator of Composition and Creative Studies at the University of Louisville. His recent concert music focuses on chamber music for instruments and interactive computer systems. Ritz has received recognitions for his work from the ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition, the 21st Century Piano Commission Competition, the Nouvel Ensemble Modern Forum a la Biennial Musiques en Scène, and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States.
Ritz's music has been performed throughout the United States, as well as in France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Canada, and Chile. His music has been performed at various conferences and festivals, including the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) National Conference, the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), the Bourges International Festival of Electroacoustic Music (IMEB), the Electroacoustic Music Festival of Santiago, Chile (CECh), the Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC), the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), the Missouri Experimental Sonic Arts Festival (MOXsonic), the Spark Festival of New Music and Art, the San Diego New Music and Arts Festival, the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival (FEMS), Electronic Music Midwest (EMM), and the Maverick New Music and Arts Festival.
Ritz received his BA from the University of Iowa, where he studied composition with Lawrence Fritts and cello with Charles Wendt, and his MM and DMA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied composition with Erik Lund, Stephen Andrew Taylor, Vinko Globokar, Agostino Di Scipio and Scott A. Wyatt.