Elena Ruehr

b. 1963

Elena Ruehr says of her music "the idea is that the surface be simple, the structure complex." An award winning faculty member at MIT, she is also a Guggenheim Fellow and has been a fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute and composer-in-residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which performed and recorded her major orchestral works (O'Keeffe Images, BMOP Sound) as well as the opera Toussaint Before the Spirits (Arsis Records). Three of her six string quartets were commissioned by the Cypress String Quartet, who have recorded How She Danced: String Quartets of Elena Ruehr. Her quartets have also been performed by the Biava, Borromeo, Lark, ROCO and Shanghai string quartets. Her other recordings include Averno (Avie with the Trinity Choir, Julian Wachner, conducting), Jane Wang considers the Dragonfly (Albany), Lift (Avie) and Shimmer (Metamorphosen Chamber Ensemble on Albany).

Dr. Ruehr was a student of William Bolcom at the University of Michigan, and Vincent Persichetti and Bernard Rands at The Juilliard School. Elena Ruehr's oeuvre includes compositions for chamber ensemble, orchestra, chorus, wind ensemble, instrumental solo, opera, dance and silent film. Her work has been described as "sumptuously scored and full of soaring melodies" (The New York Times), and "unspeakably gorgeous" (Gramophone). Dr. Ruehr has taught at MIT since 1992 and lives in Boston with her husband and daughter.