Violist Rosemary Nelis has performed as chamber musician and soloist throughout the United States and Europe, sharing her imaginative playing in work that spans the great standard repertoire, historical performance, and extensive collaboration with living composers.

Highlights of Ms. Nelis’s recent seasons include solo recitals of works by Kenji Bunch, Jeffrey Mumford, Elliott Carter, and Dorothy Rudd Moore (whose clarinet work, Night Fantasy, Ms. Nelis transcribed for viola and piano); and several important premieres, such as the North American premiere of Jörg Widmann’s String Quartet No. 7, Study on Beethoven II, the world premiere of Roger Tapping’s string quartet, Reverberations, and the New York City premiere of György Kurtág’s …Concertante… for solo violin, viola and orchestra on the Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall.

Ms. Nelis has spent her career as a champion of contemporary music, working with composers Missy Mazzoli, David Lang, Christine Southworth, Marcelo Zarvos, Jefferson Friedman, Dan Visconti, Andy Akiho, Kenji Bunch, Don Byron, James MacMillan, Brett Dean, Yu-Hui Chang, Jörg Widmann, and Joan Tower. She studied composition with Ms. Tower as well, in addition to composer John Halle. During her time with the Cassatt String Quartet Nelis worked with composers Daniel S. Godfrey, Adolphus Hailstork, Shirish Korde, and Tania Leon and enjoyed many performances of works by Fanny Mendelssohn, Dorothy Rudd Moore, and Florence Price.

As a baroque violist, she has appeared with The Sebastians, Baroquelyn, and with Juilliard415, with whom she performed on a Scandinavian tour in 2019. A devoted teacher, Nelis served as faculty at the Kinhaven Music School in 2022 and is currently a Professor of Viola at both her alma mater, the Special Music School, and the Cali School of Music at Montclair State University. In 2024 Nelis will serve as faculty at Yellow Barn’s Young Artist Program and Vilacello String and Piano Festival in Pennsylvania.

Ms. Nelis received both Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts degrees from Bard College Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Steven Tenenbom and majored in Chinese Language and Literature. Her BA thesis centered on the translation and analysis of poetry by the Beijing-based feminist poet An Qi. Ms. Nelis was the proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship during her Masters studies at The Juilliard School, where she worked with Roger Tapping and Misha Amory. She also spent time at the University of Glasgow, Qing Dao University, and Yale School of Music, working with violists Duncan Ferguson and Ettore Causa. Ms. Nelis has spent summers performing chamber music at Yellow Barn, Bard Music Festival and Kneisel Hall.

Ms. Nelis is a native of Brooklyn, and her early instrumental studies were at the Special Music School as a student of Viktor Basis. She enjoyed formative new music concerts with Face the Music, a NYC-based contemporary music ensemble, with whom she performed quartets at Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, BAMcafé, Merkin Hall, El Museo del Barrio, the Queens Museum, the Cornelia Street Café, and the Ecstatic Music Festival. Ms. Nelis plays a 1991 viola made by the Brooklyn-based maker Samuel Zygmuntowicz.