Violinist Bella Rose Kelly grew up in the Chicago suburbs. Her earliest memories are of watching her mother play piano then wondering why the keys didn’t sound the same when she herself played them. As soon as they were within reach, she was improvising and writing and exploring. Bella is a composer and violinist based in Boston. When she picked up the violin at age 9, she immediately saw it as a tool for exploration. Its versatility allowed it to fit into every style of music at her fingertips. Therefore, she joined every type of ensemble she could while growing up. Orchestras, pit orchestras, jazz bands, chamber groups, combos, choir, a rock band, singer-songwriter shows, she tried it all. Most notably, she was involved in the Merit School of Music String Orchestra (2013-2015), the 2018 All-State Orchestra (first desk, second violin), the 2018 IHSTF All-State Pit Orchestra, and the Berklee Contemporary Symphony. She also had her own indie band, Rosesky, where she was the songwriter and front woman from 2018-2019. Her biggest performing philosophy is, “the more genres you can speak, the more people you can speak to.” These diverse influences inform both her concert works and her electro-acoustic projects. This led her to Berklee College of Music where she is studying composition and screen scoring. The main group she is involved in at Berklee is the Neither/Nor ensemble run by Dr. Richard Carrick. In this ensemble, she has operated in many capacities including performing, conducting, composing, and managing. She has earned the Charles Dickerman Memorial scholarship for violin, the Berklee World Tour scholarship for violin and is a Taco Bell scholar in composition. As a Taco Bell Scholar, Bella participated in a leadership role at their in-person scholar event in summer 2022. She led a group of students in fostering professional skills and connections.
Bella has most notably studied with Dr. Renée-Paule Gauthier, Mimi Rabson, and Sharan Levanthal. She worked with Dr. Gauthier on the Mind Over Finger Podcast for five years. On the podcast, Renée interviews some of the biggest names in classical music such as James Ehnes, Marin Alsop, and Rachel Barton Pine about their practicing techniques. This work has given Bella a wealth of knowledge to draw from when tailoring lessons to individual students. The principal interest of her career is making classical music accessible through education, her compositions, and reimagining concert experiences as welcoming spaces. She believes it is essential in teaching to strike a balance between establishing firm foundational techniques and cultivating the excitement and joy of exploration. She assigns weekly listening assignments that focus on composers across the Western Classical canon but also include jazz, rock, pop, fiddle, Indian Classical, Latin jazz, klezmer, etc. This shows the ubiquity of the instrument and all the possible ways a violinist could fit into the global music conversation. Over her three and a half years of teaching, she has most greatly treasured how her students remind her of the excitement and joy of starting an instrument for the first time.
Bella Rose Kelly