Profile: Ritika, Austin Artist, by Dr. David Glen Robinson
Austin, Texas, summer 2024
Artists in Austin, especially he highly gifted ones, are working in performances and studios all over town, all the time. Given the speed of their progress, their back trails may be hard to discern, much less follow, in the remains of their finished shows and the rush of casts, technicians, and supporting artists into rehearsals for their next shows.
So it is with Ritika. Resident in Austin for a year and a half after earning her engineering degree from Texas A&M, Ritika has already chalked up impressive credits in Austin music and performance scenes, initially as pianist for rehearsals and entr'actes for dance companies Ventana Ballet, Red Nightfall Productions, First Street Studio, and Austin Community Ballet. She is also a skilled writer of poetry (published in literary magazines) and the occasional theatre review. In the summer of 2024, she was the pianist and conductor for Gutenberg! the Musical! at Coldtowne Theatre. The show's creative team was Anthony King and Scott Brown, who also wrote Beetlejuice the Musical, currently touring North America. The local production team was Matt Alspaugh (director), Dani Gonzalez, Kat Williams (producers), and Sarah J Bartholomew (choreographer).
At the time of our interview, Ritika was a few weeks past wrapping up her work in Performa/Dance’s Pivot, a groundbreaking ballet show produced by artistic director Jennifer Hart. Ritika’s work was primarily with the longish piece “Finding Alice (in Wonderland),” where she accomplished four musical production tasks:
(1) she composed part of the music, coordinated with the music of Yann Tiersen;
(2) she designed sound, incorporating the dance and other non-musical elements of the piece (a musical arranger deals only with music, while a sound designer takes on the added burdens of melding music with dance and auditory cue elements to create the artistic whole);
(3) she conducted the voiceover coaching of the cast; and (
4) she mixed and mastered all the recorded parts of what became the soundtrack of a very important show.
The online programme of Pivot credited Ritika simply as “score collaborator.”
Her current show is Attend the Tale at the Hideout Theatre on Congress Avenue in downtown Austin. It's an improvised musical take on Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. In that show she's vocal work coach for the large cast and musical director for every performance. Producers Margaret Hunsicker and Mallory Schlossberg first approached for the show in April 2024. Ritika explains the improvisation based on Sondheim’s larger work as working loosely between the most important musical numbers and plot points. Core songs receive scrupulous and disciplined treatment. Improvisation plays comically throughout. Every word in the lyrics is sung exactly on the note written by Sondheim. The improvised show is an homage to the work and to Sondheim and carefully avoids parody. As a recent eyewitness to the show, I can attest to the hard work required to apply this approach and Ritika’s skill as musical director.
When not directing actors and singers onstage, she is at home finishing up her composition work for Lore, a Panoramic Voices concert scheduled for 2025. Artistic director Juli Orlandini will conduct the umbrella group. Ritika was commissioned by the choir company to compose songs about grackles and bats (ah, Austin!). Another choral work, “The Infinity of Space” is available online for purchase from Graphite Publishing.
Ritika will travel to Sofia, Bulgaria in November 2024 to conduct the European Recording Orchestra for her graduate degree from the European Academy of Film Scoring (EAFS). Additionally, Ritika will be featured on Jocelyn Hagen’s upcoming episode on Compose Like a Girl, a podcast, gathering, and training for female-identifying musical composers. She expects to graduate from the EAFS in December.
In February 2025 Ritika will appear as invited headliner for Impro, Amsterdam's international festival for improvisers. She will be the only invited musician and support improv artists from eight countries and she'll be “teaching workshops there for about a week.”
This summary may seem to lump together a lot of diverse work scattered over five continents, but that impression is misleading. Ritika keeps a keen focus on musical composition in the purest sense of making and playing original music. She has made a lot of music so far, and there's much more to come. Burnout doesn't loom on her horizon, at least not yet. Her confidence is refreshing. “I’m 24. This is where I spread my wings and fly and see how close to the sun I can come.”
She flies high now and is very likely fly higher. Watch the skies for Ritika.