Faculty — School of Music

Krzysztof Wolek

Krzysztof Wolek (b. 1976) is a composer, improviser, electronic music performer and educator. He is a passionate advocate of contemporary acoustic and electronic music and multimedia compositions. His interdisciplinary/collaboration interests resulted in annual concerts organized under his supervision and in collaborative works with dancers and visual artists. Krzysztof graduated with a PhD in composition and computer music from the University of Chicago. He taught composition, electronic music and theory at the Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland, Columbia College Chicago and the University of Chicago. He is currently teaching Music Composition and working as the Director of Digital Composition Studies at the University of Louisville. Krzysztof serves on the jury of the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, is a Programming Committee Member of the Warsaw Autumn Festival and serves as a Director of the University of Louisville New Music Festival.

Krzysztof began his composition studies at the Music Academy in Katowice, Poland. After receiving his M.A., he moved to the Hague, Holland. He developed an interest in electronic and multimedia works while attending courses for young composers, which were organized in collaboration with studio STEIM and IRCAM. Krzysztof moved to the United States in 2001 and entered the PhD program in composition and computer music at the University of Chicago, where he also worked as the Computer Music Studio Manager. His primary composition teachers included Edward Boguslawski, Louis Andriessen, Marta Ptaszynska, Shulamit Ran and Howard Sandroff.

Krzysztof’s pieces have been performed at international festivals such as the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the University of Louisville New Music Festival, SEAMUS, SPARK, the International Computer Music Conference, the Audio Art Festival, the Annual International Contemporary Dance Conference, Musica Polonica Nova, the International Sound Engineering Conference and the ISCM World Music Days. He received commissions from the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Siemens Foundation, SCI/ASCAP as well as awards and grants including the Chicago Arts Grant from the University of Chicago Arts Planning Council, a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Prix for Mobile Variations at the Concours Internationaux de Musique et d'Art Sonore Electroacoustiques- Bourges – 2007 and the Golden Euphony Award for the same work from the MISAME association and the Bourge Competition in 2010.
Krzysztof’s works span a broad spectrum of works from purely acoustic, improvisational and electronic to various forms of multidisciplinary collaborations. In his music he creates an idiosyncratic relationship between various elements.

For more information, please visit www.krzysztofwolek.com

Allison Ogden

An advocate for pioneering art and music, multi-media collaborations and cross-cultural partnerships, electro-acoustic composer Allison Ogden began studying composition at age 13 with Andrew Waggoner of Syracuse University. In 1997 she entered the Eastman School of Music as a double major, where she studied clarinet and composition. It was during her time at Eastman that she became passionate about computer/electro-acoustic/multi-media works, after studying at the Eastman Computer Music Center. In 2001 she moved to Chicago and entered the doctoral program at the University of Chicago, receiving her PhD in composition and computer music from that institution in June, 2008. Dr. Ogden was the cofounder of the Chicago-based new music group the FireWire Ensemble, dedicated to presenting acoustic, electro-acoustic and multi-media works by young and contemporary composers. Her music has been performed throughout the United States and Europe, most recently at the International Computer Music Conference in Belfast, the 2009 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, SEAMUS 2009, The University of Iowa, the New Music Miami Festival and The University of Louisville’s New Music Festival. She currently teaches music and composition at Jefferson Community and Technical College and The University of Louisville. Dr. Ogden lives in Louisville with her husband and fellow composer Dr. Krzysztof Wolek and their daughter and son.

John Ritz

John Ritz is a composer, improviser, experimental music performer, sound artist and educator. He is a proponent of interdisciplinary arts and collaborates regularly with visual and performing artists and computer scientists. His recent concert music focuses particularly on chamber music for instruments and interactive computer systems. He has received recognitions for his work from the ASCAP/Morton Gould Composer Awards, the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition, the 21st Century Piano Commission Competition, the Forum 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 Spark Festival of New Music and Art, the Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC), 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. In addition to teaching music theory and electroacoustic music courses at UIUC, Ritz was an active researcher in the Cultural Computing Program, an interdisciplinary research initiative within the Siebel Center for Computer Science that combines the arts and humanities (Art and Design Department, School of Music, Dance Department, Theater Department, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Krannert Art Museum) with science and technology (Computer Science Department, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, National Center for Supercomputing Applications) to create and transform culture with computers. Major areas of focused research included intelligent performance spaces, including gesture tracking and analysis, and real-time control of audio, video, lighting and scenery; intelligent instruments, including computer-augmented instruments and new interfaces for performance; game research, including the development of gaming as an art form; collaboration tools, including communication models and modalities for distributed spaces; and cultural access, including tools for the creation of multimedia works of art.

Ritz joined the Music Composition and Theory faculty at the University of Louisville School of Music in 2007.