Rosalind Ventris is a leading advocate of the viola, and works as a performer, teacher and researcher. As a soloist, she has appeared at the Bozar, Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, Slovak Philharmonic and the Concertgebouw, and with orchestras such as the English Chamber Orchestra and the Belgian National Orchestra. Rosalind has collaborated with renowned artists such as pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Llŷr Williams, violinists Nicola Benedetti and Hilary Hahn, and ensembles the Arcanto Quartett and the Nash Ensemble.
Her work celebrates repertoire outside of the traditional musical canon. 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 is a member of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, with whom she has performed multiple times on BBC Radio 3 and at Wigmore Hall. The group is an Associate Ensemble of Wigmore Hall and a resident ensemble of the Humanities Cultural Programme at Oxford University.
Rosalind’s research has been closely linked to her activities as a performer: her written research focuses on early-twentieth-century string playing, as evidenced in recordings from this period, asking how this might inform performance styles today. With her former string quartet (the Albion), she recorded two Dvořák discs for Signum Records, which linked to her research at the British Library Sound Archive into the early Dvořák recordings of the Bohemian Quartet (Rosalind was a British Library Edison Fellow, 2018-2019). Rosalind wrote the liner notes for one of these discs, and the last release was Editor’s Choice in Gramophone Magazine (February 2020). Rosalind furthered her research as an awardee of an RIAM Amplify Research Grant for 2019/20, and an Erasmus- funded research trip to Prague in October 2019. Rosalind’s research interest in female composers and performers led to writing an article for The Strad on forgotten nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century female performers.
Rosalind also has a strong research interest in contemporary music. She has given numerous premieres, including several works written for her by Edwin Roxburgh at major London venues. She made the premiere recordings of Richard Blackford’s Kalon for string quartet and string orchestra with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Jirí Rožen for Signum Records with the Albion Quartet (The Sunday Times Best Recordings of 2019) and Rory Boyle’s Trio Di tre re e io (Delphian Records). As a member of flute, viola and harp trio, Trio Anima, she recorded a disc featuring contemporary Welsh music for Tŷ Cerdd. She has played alongside composers Garth Knox and Sally Beamish in performances of their works, and will be recording Beamish’s viola duo Prelude and Canon for Delphian Records alongside the composer.
Rosalind is the Director of Musical Performance and Performance Studies at the University of Oxford. She is a Senior Research Fellow in Music at St Hilda’s College, where she also sits on the JdP Advisory Committee, and is an Associate of Trinity College. For several years, Rosalind taught at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin and she is also Professor of Viola at the Guildhall School of Drama. She read Music at Cambridge University and studied with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She is one of the Artistic Directors of the Cowbridge Music Festival in Wales.
