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A founding member of the Naumburg Award winning Lydian Quartet, with whom she played for over twenty years, cellist
Rhonda Rider, (cello) is currently a member of the celebrated piano trio, Triple Helix. An active touring artist, she has been heard at international festivals including Concerts Spirituel de Geneve, Septembre Musique de L’Orne, American Academy in Rome, and Tanglewood. She has performed at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, Moscow Conservatory, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Library of Congress.
As a soloist, Rider won New York’s Concert Artists’ Guild Award as well as an Aaron Copland Fund Grant. Dedicated to the performance of “new” music, Rider has premiered and recorded works by such composers as John Harbison, Lee Hyla, Steve Mackey, Bright Sheng and Elliott Carter. Her chamber music and solo recordings have been nominated for Grammy Awards and cited as “Critic’s Choice” in both the New York Times and Boston Globe. Rider has collaborated with many artists including Robert Levin, Dawn Upshaw, Sanford Sylvan, Ida Levin, Kim Kashkashian, Roger Tapping, Rosemary Harbison and the St Petersburg, Portland and Colorado Quartets.
Ms. Rider has given numerous masterclasses at schools including Yale School of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, New England Conservatory and Princeton. She has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the American String Teachers’ Association and Chamber Music America. She has also adjudicated at the Concert Artists Guild and Fischoff Chamber Music Competitions. During the summer months she performs and teaches at Tanglewood, Green Mountain Festival, Killington Music Festival, Music From Salem and Token Creek. She is the cello coach for the Asian Youth Orchestra in Hong Kong and additionally holds a Cello Seminar dedicated to contemporary music in Salem, New York. Her teachers have included the renowned cellists Aldo Parisot, Zara Nelsova and Richard Kapuscinski. Formerly on the faculties of Brandeis University and Wellesley College, Rider is presently Coordinator of Chamber Music and on the cello faculty at The Boston Conservatory.
