Faculty/Staff

Elena Ruehr, Lecturer In Music, MM The Juilliard School, DMA The University of Michigan. Called a "composer to watch" by Opera News Elena Ruehr's vocal, orchestral, chamber and film music is "Stunning...beautifully lighted by a canny instinct for knowing when and how to vary key, timbre, and harmony" (Richard Buell, The Boston Globe, 2003). Her recordings include an opera, Toussaint Before the Spirits, which was called "impressive… an illuminating historical musical fantasy" (Joshua Rosenblum, Opera News August 2007), and its premiere "had the audience on its feet, cheering, whistling, and applauding… compelling, emotional, theatrical.…takes us back to the beginnings of the art, and to one of the first great operas, Gluck's Orfeo" (Richard Dyer, Boston Globe, 2003). According to the American Record Guide her orchestral piece Shimmer "brings joy to the listener." In 2009, Dr. Ruehr was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, where she wrote her cantata Averno, which will be premiered by the Washington Chorus at the Kennedy Center in 2010. She works regularly with the Cypress String Quartet, and has received commissions from the Borremeo String Quartet, the Shanghai String Quartet, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (where she was composer in residence from 2000-2005), the Cincinnati Symphony, and the New York Youth Symphony, among many others. She has written a number of works for international award winning baritone Stephen Salters, including two canatas, Gospel Cha Cha and Averno (with poet Louise Gluck), and Waiting for Cinque to Speak (with poet Elizabeth Alexander). Dr. Ruehr teaches in the music department at MIT where she received the Institute Wide Baker Undergraduate Teaching award in 1995.

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Contact:
ruehr@mit.edu