Rosalind Ventris is a leading advocate of the viola and has 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 soloist, she has worked with the European Union Chamber Orchestra, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Cymru, London Mozart Players, English Chamber Orchestra, l’Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie and the Belgian National Orchestra.
SOLA, Rosalind’s debut album featuring music by leading women composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, was released by Delphian Records in January 2023. The disc was Editor’s Choice in BBC Music Magazine and on Presto Music, Instrumental Choice in BBC Music Magazine, a Guardian 'pick of the week', and appeared in 'The Best Classical Music Albums of 2023' compilations in The Sunday Times and Gramophone Magazine. SOLA was nominated for the BBC Music Magazine's 2024 Premiere Award.
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, Llŷr Williams, the Nash Ensemble, the Arcanto Quartett, the Endellion Quartet, the Marmen Quartet, Barry Douglas, John O’Conor, Gerhard Schultz, the Sitkovetsky Trio, Hilary Hahn and the Benedetti Elschenbroich Grynyuk Trio. She has been invited to perform at many prestigious festivals internationally, including the BBC Proms, 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.
In the 2024-2025 season Rosalind appears as a soloist with the English Symphony Orchestra at Kings Place, London, collaborates with the Castalian Quartet at the Cowbridge Music Festival (recorded for future broadcast by the BBC), reunites with violist-composer Sally Beamish in a recording of Beamish’s viola duo Prelude and Canon for Delphian Records and gives the world premiere of a new duo by violinist-composer Simmy Singh alongside the composer. With the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, she will perform at venues such as the Wigmore Hall and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., broadcast live on NPO Klassiek, and record further albums for Chandos Records.
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 with ensembles for Delphian, Chandos, Signum, Tŷ Cerdd and Navona record labels, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, RTÉ Lyric FM, and NPO Radio 4. Rosalind 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.
Rosalind is the Director of Musical Performance and Performance Studies at the University of Oxford, and is a Professor of Viola at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She is also one of the Artistic Directors of the Cowbridge Music Festival in Wales.
A winner of multiple prizes, Rosalind received Yuri Bashmet’s ‘President’s Prize’ at the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. A graduate of Cambridge University and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Rosalind received numerous awards and prizes during her studies and after, including the Max and Peggy Morgan Prize (Guildhall School of Music & Drama), Hattori Foundation, Martin Musical Scholarship Fund, Help Musicians UK, Kirckman Concert Society, English Speaking Union, Stanley Picker Trust 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) a City Music Foundation Artist and was part of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme.
She had the privilege to study with David Takeno, Kim Kashkashian and Miguel da Silva and participated in masterclasses led by Tabea Zimmermann, Nobuko Imai, Menahem Pressler, Steven Isserlis, Thomas Riebl, Hartmut Rohde, Ferenc Rados, Rita Wagner, Barbara Westphal, Atar Arad, Steven Dann, Roberto Diaz, and Gabor Takács-Nagy.
Rosalind is the Director of Musical Performance and Performance Studies at the University of Oxford and a Professor of Viola at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. For several years, Rosalind taught at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, and she is also a Benedetti Foundation tutor. She is an approachable and caring teacher, who is keen to break down the perception of teacher as ‘guru’, instead fostering a collaborative working relationship with her students. Rosalind has taught on the MusicFest Aberystwyth and the East London Late Starters Orchestra Summer Schools.
She has given masterclasses for the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, King's College London, Ryedale Festival, Aldeburgh Music's Middle Eastern Development Project and through Erasmus. She directed the inaugural summer chamber music course for the Royal Irish Academy of Music in 2019. More recently, Rosalind has given workshops based on the repertoire from her Delphian Records CD of solo viola music by women composers at a number of secondary schools in the UK.
She has given multiple workshops for organisations such as Live Music Now and the Cavatina Chamber Music Trust to bring live music into places where people would otherwise not readily have access to it, such as schools and care homes. Widening access to live music is an important part of her role as an Artistic Director of the Cowbridge Music Festival, too.
Please visit the contact page if you are interested in joining Rosalind's class at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and wish to arrange a consultation lesson, or would be interested in Rosalind giving a workshop or masterclass for your organisation.
'Opinion: how chamber music develops communication and listening skills', The Strad (133/1592: December 2022)
The Oxford Musician Magazine Interview (2022)
Wales Arts Review Feature on Cowbridge Music Festival
Corpus Christi College Cambridge Interview
Masterclass: Rosalind Ventris on Vieuxtemps Viola Sonata Op.36 (131/1565: September 2020)
Read Rosalind’s Edison Fellowship blog (September 2019)
‘Ševčík’s female students’, The Strad (130/1550: June 2019)
Liner notes and artist note for Dvořák Quartets Nos. 5 and 12, Signum Records, (May 2019)
‘Postcard from Whittington’, The Strad (128/1527: July 2017)
‘Practice Diary’, The Strad (127/1511: March 2016)
Dutch Viola Society Interview, 2013
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.