Ellen Ruth Rose (viola) enjoys a varied career as a soloist, ensemble musician and teacher with a strong interest in the music of our times. In addition to her work as violist and Artistic Coordinator of Earplay, she is a member of Empyrean Ensemble, the flagship new music ensemble in residence at UC Davis and Eco Ensemble, the professional new music ensemble at UC Berkeley, and also performs often in other projects around the Bay Area and beyond. She has performed as soloist with the West German Radio Chorus, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Santa Cruz New Music Works, the Diablo Symphony, the symphony orchestras of UC Davis and Berkeley, the UC Davis Chorus, at the San Francisco Other Minds and Ojai Music festivals, and at Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. In the 1990s, she worked extensively throughout Europe with Frankfurt's Ensemble Modern and the Cologne experimental ensembles Musik Fabrik and Thürmchen Ensemble, appearing at the Cologne Triennial, Berlin Biennial, Salzburg Zeitfluß, Brussels Ars Nova, Venice Biennial, Budapest Autumn and Kuhmo (Finland) festivals.

Rose holds an M.Mus. in viola performance from the Juilliard School, an artist diploma from the Northwest German Music Academy in Detmold, Germany, and a B.A. with honors in English and American history and literature from Harvard University. She is on the instrumental faculty at UC Berkeley and UC Davis and has taught at the University of the Pacific, the Humboldt Chamber Music Workshop and the Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop. Her own viola teachers have included Heidi Castleman, Nobuko Imai, Marcus Thompson, and Karen Tuttle.