Ridge High School
Basking Ridge, NJ

Welcome to the Ridge High School Choral Website!

Barbara Retzko
Choral Director

Barbara Retzko is the full-time Director of Choral Activities at Ridge High School in Basking Ridge, NJ where she leads the award-winning Ridge Chorale, Concert Choir and A Cappella Choir Honors. From 2000-2002 she served as Choral Director at the International School of Düsseldorf, Germany where her singers performed in Honor Choirs in Den Hague, Netherlands; Stavanger, Norway and Berlin, Germany. In May 2002 and May 2006, she was chosen as Guest Conductor for International Honor Choirs in Zurich and Basel, Switzerland. Barbara is currently serving a fifth year as Associate Professor at Rutgers University (Douglass College campus), directing the Voorhees Choir.

Stateside, Barbara has served as Guest Conductor for the 1991 New Jersey All-State Chorus, the 2002 Independent School Choral Festival in Charlotte, North Carolina, the 1998 New Jersey Region II Mixed Chorus, the 2008 Sussex County Chorus and the 2009 Region II Women’s Choir. She received the Governor's Teacher Award for Teacher of the Year at Ridge High School in 1998 and the first Excellence in Arts Education Award from the Somerset County Cultural & Heritage Commission in 2005. She was named Master Music Teacher 2008 by NJMEA. She has traveled with the American Music Abroad RED tour to Europe during the summers of 1998, 1999 and 2006 and will travel again in 2011. In February 2011, she will conduct the New Jersey All-State Women’s Choir at NJPAC.

Barbara Retzko possesses a strong commitment and dedication to the Choral education of all singers. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Music Education from Trenton State College and her Master of Arts, Summa cum laude, in Choral Conducting from the same. She has served as an adjudicator for the Hunterdon & Sussex County Teen Arts program, the Roxbury High School Invitational and Performing Arts Consultants.

She is a member of the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) and serves on the state board of the New Jersey Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) representing Repertoire & Standards – Senior High School.

Barbara is at home in Bernardsville with her husband, Rick.