Richard Baratta

Richard Baratta was born into a musical family in Poughkeepsie, NY. He began his musical journey while just a teenager, playing saxophone, flute before settling exclusively on drums. He played mostly jazz all through his teens and his days at New York’s Wagner College. After studying with Jack DeJohnette and others he moved to NYC to pursue his musical career. For about a decade Baratta played gigs in and around the NYC / tri-state area where some of his bandmates included John Stubblefield, Joe Ford, Hal Galper and a very memorable pair of one-day gigs with first Hank Mobley and then Johnny Hartman. In the mid 1980’s, it was the desire for stability that spawned Baratta’s farewell to jazz and led him to pursue a career in movie production. Since then he has worked on and/or served as executive producer for films such as the wildly successful Joker, Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman, five Spiderman movies, The Wolf of Wall Street, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Donnie Brasco¸ Mrs. Doubtfire and Tom Hanks’ Big. Now,years later, Richard Baratta decided to return to jazz with a nod to his previous vocation with his Savant Records’ debut, appropriately-named Music in Film: The Reel Deal. Featuring alto sax phenom Vincent Herring, guitarist Paul Bollenback and pianist/arranger Bill O'Connell the band burns, boils and cooks over a low flame on 12 tunes from classic soundtracks composed by Nino Rota, Burt Bacharach, Henry Mancini to name a few.