He attended McGill University’s Schulich School of Music,[2] where he studied composition with Chris Harman, Brian Cherney, and John Rea.
He earned a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, where he studied with George Lewis and Fred Lerdahl.
[4] In May 2017, the opening of Ricketts’s Highest Light, a Montreal Symphony Orchestra commission, was performed by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet aboard the International Space Station,[5] in a live broadcast during the world premiere performance in Montreal.
[6] Ricketts's chamber opera Chaakapesh: The Trickster's Quest, with a libretto in Cree by Indigenous Canadian playwright Tomson Highway, premiered in September 2018 as the opening of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra's 85th season,[7] and was followed by a tour of indigenous communities in Northern Quebec.
His operatic collaboration with composer Thierry Tidrow, Less Truth More Telling, was produced in 2013 by the Dutch National Opera and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.