Rosalind Ventris

British violist Rosalind Ventris leads an international career as a soloist and chamber musician. As a recitalist, she has performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, Dublin International Chamber Music Festival, Purcell Room, Bozar, Flagey, Slovak Philharmonic, Aldeburgh Festival and Het Concertgebouw. As a concerto soloist, she has worked with the European Union Chamber Orchestra, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Cymru, London Mozart Players, l’Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie and the Belgian National Orchestra. Rosalind’s debut album, featuring music by leading women composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, will be released on Delphian Records in January 2023.

As a chamber musician, Rosalind frequently performs as part of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective (Associate Ensemble of the Wigmore Hall), and is the violist of flute, viola and harp ensemble Trio Anima. She has collaborated with internationally renowned artists such as Mitsuko Uchida, Tabea Zimmermann, the Arcanto Quartett, the Endellion Quartet, the Marmen Quartet, Barry Douglas, John O’Conor, Gerhard Schultz and the Benedetti Elschenbroich Grynyuk Trio. She has been invited to perform at many prestigious festivals internationally, including the West Cork, Marlboro, Salzburg and Båstad Festivals, IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music, and venues such as the Auditorium du Louvre, Paris, and the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn.

Praised for her "beguiling" and "characterful" playing (Gramophone), recordings featuring Rosalind as a chamber musician have received favourable reviews in the national and international press. She has recorded for Delphian, Chandos, Signum, Tŷ Cerdd and Navona record labels, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, RTÉ Lyric FM, and NPO Radio 4. Rosalind also enjoys contemporary music collaborations, having performed alongside composers Garth Knox and Sally Beamish. As a former founder member of the Albion Quartet she recorded Richard Blackford’s Kalon with the Czech Philharmonic at the Rudolfinum (Prague). She has also premiered several works by Edwin Roxburgh, and in 2016 Rosalind recorded a new work for clarinet, viola and piano by Rory Boyle for Delphian Records. Rory Boyle has also written a work for Trio Anima, premiered in London in 2019.

Rosalind studied with David Takeno, Kim Kashkashian and Miguel da Silva, and participated in masterclasses with Tabea Zimmermann, Nobuko Imai, Menahem Pressler, Steven Isserlis, Hartmut Rohde, Steven Dann, Roberto Diaz, Ferenc Rados, Rita Wagner, Atar Arad, Barbara Westphal and Thomas Riebl. She holds an undergraduate degree from Cambridge University, and completed her postgraduate studies at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where later she was a Fellow. During her studies she received awards and prizes from the Hattori Foundation, Martin Musical Scholarship Fund, Help Musicians, Kirckman Concert Society, English Speaking Union, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and the Countess of Munster Trust. Rosalind was selected as an International Holland Music Sessions ‘Young Master on Tour’, a Countess of Munster Recital Scheme Artist, a Park Lane Group Artist, a Philip & Dorothy Green Making Music Award Winner (AYCA) and a City Music Foundation Artist. She was the youngest prizewinner at the Lionel Tertis Competition in 2006, and won five prizes at the 2013 Tertis Competition, including the President’s Prize. From 2018 to 2019 Rosalind was an Edison Fellow at the British Library Sound Archive. Her publications include liner notes for Signum Records and articles for The Strad Magazine.

Rosalind is a deeply committed teacher, and in 2021 was appointed Director of Musical Performance and Performance Studies at the University of Oxford. She is also a professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and previously taught at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. She is Artistic Director of the Cowbridge Music Festival in Wales.