Preparing the Next Generation of Performers

Rhonda Rider’s busy 40-year concert career has included performances in both traditional and nontraditional environments, including more than two decades with the Naumburg Award–winning Lydian String Quartet and Triple Helix Piano Trio. She uses her extensive performance experience to open her students’ minds and sharpen their musical instincts.

A Grammy-nominated recording artist with Critics Choice Awards in both the New York Times and the Boston Globe, Rider recognizes that recording skills are critical to a dynamic career. She recently brought BoCoCelli, the Conservatory’s student cello octet, to the storied Power Station at BerkleeNYC, where they recorded a groundbreaking 360-degree video of student and professional works, including a commission by Navajo composer Michael Begay. “Having students spend the day working in this historic space with extraordinary recording engineers was a dream,” Rider says. Soon after, she traveled to New Mexico to perform with pianist Judith Gordon in a live music program for Chatter, a popular regional organization that aims to revolutionize the audience experience of high-caliber classical music by bringing it out of the formal concert space and into a more intimate cabaret Environment.

Such travel can be demanding, but it also helps Rider’s students learn that a performing musician’s schedule needs to be fluid and dynamic. Indeed, Rider offers her students practical and professional advice that can only be learned in live performance. “I’m able to tell a student firsthand how to pace themselves in a Shostakovich concerto, what to listen for in a Brahms quartet, or how to perform an extended technique in new music,” she explains. That balance of artistic vision, practicality, and openness to new directions is at the heart of what she most wishes to model for her students: 

“Practice, answer your emails, dream, and listen to your instincts.”