A versatile musician on the podium and at the keyboard, conductor Gregory Ritchey has held positions with companies both in the US and internationally including the Wexford Opera Festival, Palm Beach Opera, the Amalfi Coast Music Festival and Opera Theatre of St. Louis. He was for several seasons Music Directer at Gulfshore Opera conducting Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, La Traviata, and La Boheme. He presently serves as principal conductor of the Palm Beach Atlantic Philharmonic. In addition to symphony orchestras in Saint Louis, Dallas, and San Francisco, Ritchey has worked extensively with the opera orchestra of Cluj, Romania over the course of five summers as conductor of the Amalfi Coast Music Festival.
For several years, Mr. Ritchey has serverd as Associate Conductor at Palm Beach Opera, where after a recent performance on the Waterfront Concert series, for which he served as conductor and music director, the Palm Beach Arts Paper noted “Mr. Ritchey is to be congratulated for leading such massive forces in a splendid and stirring performance. The audience rose to their feet with acclaim.”
A graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, Mr. Ritchey maintains an active chamber music, collaborative and solo piano career, performing throughout the United States and Europe in collaboration with such artist as Denyce Graves, Susan Milan, Carol Wincenc, the late Jan Mark Sloman, and Hao Zhou. In a recent recital on the IlluminArts Concert series in Miami the South Florida Classical Review noted, “Ritchey brought lightness and color to the keyboard lines, at times sounding almost improvisatory. The rippling passages of the opening and closing songs in the cycle were dispatched with accuracy and verve.”
Mr. Ritchey has previously held music staff positions with companies across the US including the Dallas Opera, Central City Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Bard Music Festival, Virginia Opera, and Sarasota Opera. He has also been a faculty member at the University of North Texas, Louisiana State University, and Texas Christian University. In addition to the MM degree in piano performance from the Juilliard School of Music, he also earned a BM degree from the University of North Texas.