“When I draw and paint, I feel like I am dancing.” RB

Rita Blitt, award winning painter, sculptor and filmmaker, has been creating art for seven decades. Her work celebrates her love of nature, music, dance and the spontaneous flow of movement captured in the drawn gesture. Her art, recording her enthusiasm for life, has been seen throughout the world.

Aspen, Colorado, has been a primary inspiration in Rita Blitt’s life. In 2011, her art was featured on the cover of the Aspen Music festival’s program book.

Referring to “Abyss of Time," a collaboration between composer Michael Udow and artist Rita Blitt, Martin J. Sherwin, Pulitzer Prize winning author, University Professor of History and Art History, George Mason University wrote:

“Abyss of Time is an astonishingly beautiful integration of painting and music. Watching it is an experience akin to drifting through MOMA on a cloud of mesmerizing music. At times the paintings seem to be the musicians, and at other times the music seems to be painting. It is a technically perfect documentary that demonstrates how intimately connected are our aural and visual senses.”

Commenting on film "Collaborating with the Past,” with music of holocaust victim Pavel Haas and Rita Blitt drawings inspired by the music, Ida Simchowitz wrote:

"Looking and listening to 'Collaborating with the Past' made me immediately relate and visualize the flames of the 'Burning Bush' of the Bible with the flames and cinders of the gas chambers. In your recent creations, the marriage of painting, music and dancing seems very inspiring.'

Blitt films have received numerous awards. “Caught in Paint,” a collaboration with choreographer David Parsons, the Parsons dancers, and photographer Lois Greenfield has received 16 awards and been shown in over 130 film festivals throughout the world. In 2008, Moving Pictures Magazine showed “Caught in Paint" at a Film Festival party in Cannes, France.

Blitt’s words, ”Kindness is contagious. Catch it!", sent all over the world in hopes of making the world a better place, inspired the film “What Kindness Means to Me.”

In addition to her paintings and sculpture being shown in over 70 one person exhibitions, Blitt's monumental sculpture, up to 60 feet in height, are seen in many states in America, Japan and Singapore.

Blitt works can be seen in museums and private collections. The Blitt Archive, a collection of Blitt’s most important pieces created throughout her life, is being established at the Mulvane Museum, Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas. A small building connected to Washburn’s concert hall will show changing exhibitions from the Blitt Archive. The new building will open in 2017.

In 2000 Yehuda Hanani, international cello soloist and professor wrote:

“Rita Blitt’s art and life are inseparable. Every gesture, in both, is borne on the wings of spontaneous responses unfettered by self-consciousness and guided by childlike purity and trust, immediacy, and an unshakable belief in ultimate goodness. Her constant search for the spirit and essence of reality is accompanied by a sense of wonder and mischief. She lovingly conveys with experienced choreographic lines her vision of the world, where the kinetic energy of dance and an entire musical universe are transformed into the realm of the visual. The sculpture and drawings are by turn fluid and harmonious or rhythmic and staccato. In each instance they resonate with primal memories of collective symbols.”

Fulbright-Hayes Fellow, Michael Udow, was the 2014-15 Composer-in-Residence with the Colorado Chamber Orchestra. Michael has composed operas, film scores, orchestral and wind ensemble works as well as numerous chamber music and solo compositions. His distinctive compositional voice alludes categorization. Quite often, his rhythmically engaging complex contrapuntal lines with dense timbres weave effortlessly with memorable melodic lines.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch review by Clarke Bustard of the premiere of The Shattered Mirror Suite performed by the Richmond Symphony states:

“It is a suite of symphonic dances, mixing old European modes with complementary non-Western sounds and styles. The suite is straightforwardly melodic and conventionally orchestrated. Udow injects plenty of syncopated rhythm and intricate counterpoint in his wind parts.” The symphony’s music director, George Manahan, for whom Udow has played in the Santa Fe Opera orchestra, gave “The Shattered Mirror” an energetic, well-articulated introduction last night at Virginia Commonwealth University. Alan Paterson made a convincing soliloquy of Udow’s long introduction for solo French horn, and cellist Neal Cary projected his folkish solo with a balladeer’s sensibility.”

Having retired after a distinguished career at The Santa Fe Opera (Principal Percussion 1968 - 2009) and the University of Michigan (1982 - 2011 Emeritus Professor), Michael devotes his full time energies towards composing. Michael continues to provide short term composition and percussion residencies at conservatories and universities around the world, most recently in China, Japan, Korea and the USA. In 2013 this included residencies in China, Japan and Korea. His inspiring composition teachers included Warren Benson, Herbert Brün, Edwin London, Thomas Fredrickson, Paul Steg, Wlodzimierz Kotoński and he credits Salvatore Martirano, Ben Johnston, Gordon Binkerd, Morgan Powell and Neely Bruce for their informative contributions. Michael’s exceptional percussion education began with Doc Meyer and continued with Bob Lee, F. Michael Combs, Jack McKenzie, Frederick Fairchild, Russell Hartenberger Michael Ranta, Alan Abel and his BM, MM & DMA professor, Thomas Siwe.

Born in 1949 in Detroit, Michigan, Udow began his musical studies at the piano. After several years, he gravitated towards percussion. At the age of eleven his family moved to Wichita, Kansas where he joined the Wichita Youth Symphony. In his first rehearsal with Roger Roller on the podium conducting George Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody, Udow recalls being overwhelmed with the of the sound world of the strings, winds, brass and percussion; this pivotal experience provided the pathway for his life, which continued with four summers at the National Music Camp at Interlochen where his percussion teacher, Jack McKenzie encouraged Michael to compose and later. Later, at the Interlochen Arts Academy, Michael began his formal composition studies with Warren Benson.

Arriving at the University of Illinois in the fall of 1967, John Cage’s monumental Music Circus “happened.” Michael performed Ben Johnston’s Knocking Piece with Jocy de Oliveira in synchronization to an animated film of the poly-rhythms. He also performed Morton Feldman’s King of Denmark with Merce Cunningham dancers improvising to the music. That was the beginning of Michael’s comprehensive college education interacting constantly with composers. During his undergraduate studies Michael received a BMI Student Composers Prize for his composition, Seven Textural Settings of Japanese Haiku.

After joining the New Orleans Philharmonic and then on to the Fulbright to Poland, Michael returned to the United States to tour with the historic groundbreaking Blackearth Percussion Group. Ultimately returning to Illinois with a Creative Arts Fellowship, he continued his composition studies and matriculated with a MM and the first DMA degree in percussion performance from the University of Illinois in 1978. After late nights during summer months at the opera and while teaching during the winters, Udow continued to compose, including two operas as well as numerous symphonic, chamber and solo works. Michael recently completed Stepping Stones, a marimba duet, for Eriko Daimo and Pius Cheung and is currently completing a new orchestral and a new wind ensemble work.

Blitt art and workshop presentation; Michael Udow, composer: Over the Moon, 2001. Magic evolves as dance students are inspired to listen to their inner voices, improvise movement on the floor and then, when ready, extend that movement onto paper. The process repeats as the dancers flow back and forth creatively involving their entire bodies.