Violist ELLEN RUTH ROSE enjoys a varied career as a soloist, ensemble musician and teacher with a strong interest the music of our times. She is a member of Ecoensemble, the professional new music ensemble at UC Berkeley, Empyrean Ensemble, the flagship new music ensemble in residence at UC Davis, and Earplay, the San Francisco-based contemporary ensemble. She has worked extensively throughout Europe with Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern and the Cologne experimental ensembles Musik Fabrik and Thürmchen Ensemble, appearing at the Cologne Triennial, Berlin Biennial, Salzburg Zeitfluß, Brussels Ars Nova, Venice Biennial, Budapest Autumn and Kuhmo (Finland) festivals. She has performed as soloist with numerous ensembles including the West German Radio Chorus, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Santa Cruz New Music Works, the Diablo Symphony, the symphony orchestras of UC Berkeley and UC Davis, at the San Francisco Other Minds and Ojai Music festivals and at Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. She has appeared on numerous recordings, including a CD of the chamber music of German composer Caspar Johannes Walter—featuring several pieces written for her—which won the German Recording Critics’ new music prize in 1998.
Over the past several years she has collaborated with, premiered and recorded works by numerous Northern California composers—several from within the UC Berkeley community—including Edmund Campion (Melt me with thy delicious numbers, for viola and live electronics, 2003), Cindy Cox (Turner, for viola and piano, 2008), Aaron Einbond (Beside Oneself, for viola and live electronics, 2008), John MacCallum (El Arbol de la noche triste, for viola and electronics, 2009), Mei-Fang Lin (Friction, for flute and viola, 2008), Kurt Rohde (Double Trouble, a double viola chamber concerto, 2002, and Double-Franken-Trouble-Stein, for two amplified violas and orchestra, 2011), Pablo Ortiz (Le vrai tango argentin, for solo viola, 2001, and The viola in the motorcycle boy’s life, for viola and marimba, 2009), Mark Winges (Diverted Vignettes for solo viola, 2012; Night Voiced for viola and piano, 2011; Night Voiced for viola and organ, 2011), Linda Bouchard (4LN, for viola, percussion and electronics, 2008), Mauricio Rodriguez (Crepitum, for solo viola, 2011) and Robert Coburn (Fragile Horizons, for viola, video, voice and computer, 2007).
Rose holds an M.Mus. in viola performance from the Juilliard School, an artist diploma from the Northwest German Music Academy in Detmold, Germany and a B.A. with honors in English and American history and literature from Harvard University. Her viola teachers have included Heidi Castleman, Nobuko Imai, Marcus Thompson, and Karen Tuttle. She is on the instrumental faculty at UC Berkeley and UC Davis and has taught at the University of the Pacific, the Humboldt Chamber Music Workshop and the Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop. Her students have gone on to masters and doctoral programs in viola performance throughout the country as well as medical school, veterinary school, music history graduate programs and other places where good violists enrich the world.