Cellist Rhonda Rider was a member of the Naumburg Award winning Lydian Quartet for over twenty years as well as the piano trio Triple Helix. She has won numerous prizes at Banff, Evian, Fischoff and Portsmouth Chamber Music Competitions and two American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Adventurous Programming Awards. As a soloist she was awarded the Concert Artists Guild Award as well as the Aaron Copland Recording Grant.

 

A Grammy Award nominated artist, Rider has recorded over thirty discs of chamber music and solo repertoire. Her 2020 disc, The Sonata of Gabriel Fauré is released on Centaur Records. Rider has adjudicated at the Concert Artists Guild, Stulberg and Fischoff Competitions and served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America and the American String Teachers’ Association.

 

Rider has performed Internationally in Europe, Asia and the US at such venues as the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, Symphony Space, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts and has been a guest artist with the Boston Chamber Music Society and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Chamber Music Series. Dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music, Rider has premiered and recorded works by such renowned composers as John Harbison, Lee Hyla, Yu-Hui Chang, Bright Sheng and Elliott Carter.

Always interested in bringing classical music to unusual places Rider was named Artist-in-Residence at Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest National Parks. Twenty pieces for solo cello were commissioned for her residencies. These works have been performed in a wide variety of venues from urban settings in Boston, Tampa, Provo and Dallas to Wupatki National Monument and rural Washington County, New York.

Rider holds degrees from Oberlin and Yale. Her teachers include Richard Kapuscinski, Aldo Parisot, Zara Nelsova, Simon Goldberg, Louis Krasner and Robert Koff. Twice a recipient of Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s Music Division Teacher of the Year, she is currently on the cello and chamber music faculty there and at Boston University.