Member Directory

Ruth Marie Ballance

Violin, Viola Teacher SAA Member

Ruth Marie Ballance will be relocating with her husband, cello teacher Jared Ballance, to Kent, Washington this summer, where they will be starting their own Talent Education program. During the 2011-2012 school year they lived in Birmingham, Alabama, where Ruth Marie joined the faculty of Suzuki Talent Education Program Birmingham, was a member of the Samford University String Quartet, and taught at University of Alabama—Birmingham. During the 2010-2011 school year, she ran her own Talent Education program in Huntsville, Alabama. She was previously on the violin, viola, and chamber music faculty at Hochstein School of Music and Dance in Rochester, New York, where her students were regular prize- and scholarship-winners. Previous appointments include the Cleveland Institute of Music, Broadway School of Music and the Arts in Cleveland, Credo Chamber Music, and Austin Chamber Music Center Summer Workshop. Ruth Marie studied violin with Paul Landefeld, Leonard Posner, Linda Cerone, David Russell, and Paul Kantor among others, and received the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Jerome Gross Prize in Violin in 2001. In addition she has registered Suzuki teacher training with Ronda Cole, Edmund Sprunger, Alice Joy Lewis, Patricia D’Ercole, Carol Dallinger, Nancy Jackson, Cathy Lee, and Christie Felsing, and has been published in the American Suzuki Journal three times. She earned the SAA Certificate of Achievement in 2011, and has performed as a concerto soloist with the Austin Symphony, the Austin Civic Orchestra, and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, among others, as well as performing as a member of the Alaska Quartet in several states.