Praised by Fanfare magazine for her “delicious” playing and for her tone, which is “larger than life, sweetly in tune, and infinitely variegated”, Carol Rodland, violist, enjoys an international career as a concert and recording artist and pedagogue.
Recent performance highlights have included recitals at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, New York’s Merkin Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, at the Curitiba Festival in Brazil, and throughout Germany; concerto appearances with conductor Dennis Russell Davies and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and with conductor Russell Guyver at the Western Honors Orchestra Festival in Greeley, Colorado; as well as chamber music concerts with the Andover and Winsor Chamber Music Players, the Portland Chamber Music Festival, and as guest violist with the Henschel, Borromeo, Cassatt, and Colorado String Quartets. She has also been a frequent guest with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and has been a member of Vermont’s Craftsbury Chamber Players since 1995. She currently performs in duos with her sister, organist Dr. Catherine Rodland, and with pianists Tatevik Mokatsian and Marcantonio Barone. Her debut recording of American viola works with Professor Mokatsian on the Crystal Records label was released in 2007 to highest critical acclaim.
A devoted and much sought-after teacher, Ms. Rodland was recently appointed to a tenured viola professorship at the Eastman School of Music, beginning in the fall semester 2008. Since 2002, she has been on the New England Conservatory viola faculty and was recognized there in 2005 with the “Krasner Award for Excellence in Teaching”. Prior appointments have included professorships at the Hochschule fuer Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin, Germany, and at Arizona State University. She has also taught as guest faculty at the Juilliard School. Her former students hold prominent positions worldwide as performers in orchestras and chamber ensembles and as teachers. In demand as a master class clinician, she has been engaged recently in this capacity at the Musikhochschule Saar in Germany, at Boston University, Boston Conservatory, Oberlin Conservatory, and for the Ohio and Rocky Mountain Viola Societies. She has also been on the faculty of the “Karen Tuttle Co-Ordination Workshop” since 2004 and at the Heifetz International Music Institute since 2005. Additional summer festival engagements have included the Bowdoin International Music Festival, California Summer Music, the Killington Music Festival, and the Cactus Pear, Mimir, and Portland Chamber Music Festivals.
Passionately devoted to the music of our time, Ms. Rodland is co-artistic director of the contemporary music festival “Sound Encounters”, launched to critical acclaim at New England Conservatory’s Summer School in 2006. David Cleary of the New Music Connoisseur described performances at the festival as “top-shelf wonderful, among the best heard all season. Festival organizers Carol Rodland (viola) and Michael Norsworthy (clarinet), joined by violinist Ariadne Daskalakis, cellist Scott Kluksdahl, and pianist Max Levinson, played as if their very lives depended on it. All aspects of execution—pitch, tone technique, pacing, interpretation—were flawless, as was chamber interaction and blend.” Composers whose works Ms. Rodland has commissioned and premiered include Kenji Bunch, Dan Coleman, Christopher Theofanidis, Augusta Read Thomas, and Matthias Truniger.
Ms. Rodland made her solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra as a teenager and subsequently won first prizes at the Washington International Competition, the Artists International Auditions, and the Juilliard Concerto Competition, as well as the Universal Editions Prize at the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. She has also been the recipient of Fulbright and Beebe Fund grants and Juilliard’s Lillian Fuchs Prize. She has served on the Executive Board of the American Viola Society since 2003 and has served on the juries of the 2005 and 2008 Primrose International Viola Competitions.
She holds bachelor and master of music degrees from the Juilliard School, where she studied on full scholarship with Karen Tuttle, as well as an Aufbaustudium Diplom, awarded with “distinction” from the Musikhochschule Freiburg, where she studied with Kim Kashkashian. She had the unique privilege of serving as teaching assistant to both of her mentors.
Ms. Rodland performs on a viola made in 1791 by the Italian luthier Vincenzo Panormo.
