Melinda Rice

Melinda Rice has led the Ursinus String Ensemble in concerts at the college’s Bomberger Auditorium, collaborations with the Berman Art Museum (Ursinus’ on-campus art museum) and with the Wharton Esherick Museum. In addition to leading the Ursinus String Ensemble, Melinda Rice is a person invested in creating space for music in community. The string ensemble has performed music in collaboration with the film and anime clubs on campus, performed for graduation, and is planning to join the professional ensemble Not So Silent Cinema to present a score along with a silent film.

As an educator, Melinda has been a curriculum co-writer for the LA Philharmonic’s in-schools program, has conducted in the Pasadena Youth Symphony Orchestra and Harmony Project and YOLA programs, has presented at Take A Stand conferences, and has been one of the educators on the field with their performing students during a Super Bowl halftime show (2016).

Melinda’s recent collaborative projects outside Ursinus include developing a performance combining looped string music, spoken word and local history (re:claim with Heather Bowlan at Laurel Hill Cemetery, and then at Hansberry Garden), a song cycle around a personal history of water for piano, violin, and voice (Water Cycle with Teri Card Heller), and a solo acoustic violin series with a live siren from a local nuclear generating station (siren songs, and right beneath the moon on Strange Woman Records).

Melinda returned to Pennsylvania in 2020 after a decade and a half exploring music in southern California with ensembles including the Craft in America House Band, A Tribute Ensemble, Isaura String Quartet, Wild Up, and The Industry, and teaching with Harmony Project, Youth Orchestra LA, and the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra’s program in elementary schools. Melinda brings the community-oriented and often experimental orientation they developed there to their current practice. Melinda enjoys digging into new chamber works, plays with a wedding band, co-authored an article on Listening in the 2023 issue of The Turnaround, and has released two albums of original works, and recently released tracks including right beneath the moon on Strange Woman Records.