Mary Beth Rhodes-Woodruff

About Mary Beth

Violinist Mary Beth Woodruff is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New England Conservatory of Music, and Carnegie Mellon. She is currently the concertmaster of the Santa Maria Philharmonic in Central California, the 'Wagner in Vermont' Festival Orchestra, a member of the Radian String Quartet, and the Artistic Director and conductor of Santa Barbara Strings - a multi-tiered string orchestra and chamber music program. She has served on the faculty of the Biola University Conservatory of Music as professor of violin/viola and head of chamber music, Songfest International at the Colburn School, and the Westmont Academy for Young Artists. She has been a member of Boston-based Bach Cantata Program at Emmanuel Music under Craig Smith and John Harbison with whom the ensemble was nominated for a Grammy Award for recordings made therein. Former festival experience has included: Kneisel Hall, Zell a.d. Pram Kammermusik Festispiele of the Mozarteum, the International Symphony Orchestra in Jerusalem, the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and the Mostly Mozart Festival. Her principal teachers have included Ronald Copes, Julia Bushkova, James Buswell, Andres Cardenes and John Harbison. She plays on a Guidantus Florenus made in Bologna, Italy in 1727.

I encourage my students to see themselves not only instrumentalists but as poets, actors, athletes, and scientists and to make all four of these roles active in how he/she approaches his/her instrument in order to become more full musicians.