Rosalind Ventris

She studied at Cambridge University, where she won all the available prizes for musical performance, and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. At the Guildhall she won the Max and Peggy Morgan Prize and later became a Fellow.

Her career was launched as the youngest prizewinner at the Lionel Tertis Viola competition, aged seventeen. As a recitalist, she has appeared at the Royal Festival Hall, Flagey, Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall, Slovak Philharmonic and Concertgebouw. As soloist, she has performed with the European Union Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonia Cymru, l’Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, and the Belgian National Orchestra. A keen chamber musician, Rosalind has collaborated with Mitsuko Uchida at Marlboro Festival, Tabea Zimmermann, Garth Knox, and Thomas Hoppe at Wigmore Hall, the Arcanto Quartett at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn, and Gerhard Schultz at the Salzburg Festival. She has also been a guest with the Dante, Endellion and Elias quartets. Future performances include a solo appearance with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields at the St. Alban’s International Organ Festival, a solo recital at the BOZAR, and concerts at the Cheltenham Festival (with the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective), Ryedale Festival, Lake District Summer Music, and Sion Festival, and performing with the Aronowitz Ensemble and London Symphony Orchestra (guest co-principal viola).

Rosalind is a member of the flute-viola-harp ensemble Trio Anima. She has frequently performed as a guest player in the Aronowitz Ensemble, and regularly attends IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music. Further highlights from the past season include performances at the BOZAR, Flagey, Auditorium du Louvre, Het Concertgebouw (broadcast live on Dutch Radio), Aldeburgh Festival, Bridgewater Hall, Kings Place, Ryedale Festival, Champs Hill, Machynlleth Festival and the Båstad Chamber Music Festival. Rosalind has been guest principal viola of the European Union Chamber Orchestra (aged 19), Amsterdam Sinfonietta and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. She has held residencies at the Banff Centre in Canada, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium and at Snape Maltings.

Rosalind is a strong advocate of contemporary music. She has performed Garth Knox’s Marais Variations at the Wigmore Hall with the composer and Tabea Zimmermann, and (as a former founder member of the Albion Quartet) has recorded Richard Blackford’s Kalon with the Czech Philharmonic at the Rudolfinum in Prague. Edwin Roxburgh has written several works for her (premiered at Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room and Royal Festival Hall), and Trio Anima will soon give the premiere of a new work by Rory Boyle in London. Rosalind has recorded new music for the Delphian, Signum and Navona record labels, and has broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and on NPO Radio 4.

As an artist in residence at Yellowbarn USA she examined the early recordings of the National Gramophonic Society, and the impact this can have on performance. She is currently an Edison Fellow at the British Library, where she is researching historical recordings of the Bohemian quartet. Rosalind teaches viola and chamber music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. In Ireland, she has performed with Annalien Van Wauwe and Barry Douglas at the West Cork Music Festival, at Dublin’s National Concert Hall, and has a forthcoming performances in the National Gallery in Dublin and the ‘Great Music in Irish Houses’ series. In addition to her position at the RIAM, Rosalind has also taught at King’s College London on the Advanced Performance Course, the Britten-Pears Middle East Development Project, City University and the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (masterclasses in chamber music and viola, and chamber music coaching).

During her studies Rosalind received awards from the Hattori Foundation, Martin Musical Scholarship Fund, Musicians Benevolent Fund, Kirckman Concert Society, English Speaking Union, Stanley Picker Trust and the Countess of Munster Trust. She was an International Holland Music Sessions ‘Young Master on Tour’, was a Park Lane Group Artist and a Philip & Dorothy Green Making Music Award Winner (AYCA). She won five prizes including Yuri Bashmet’s ‘President’s Prize’ at the Lionel Tertis Competition in 2013.