Owen Ruff

Owen Ruff is a violinist from the cornfields of Sycamore, Illinois. His playing has been praised by the Chicago Classical Review as having “fine poise and largely polished proficiency,” and by the South Florida Classical Review as playing with “singing tone,” “bracing intensity” and “ability to turn on a dime from meditative stasis to agitation.” He has recently completed a contract playing with the Auckland Philharmonia in New Zealand as a rotating tutti violin. He has also appeared in the violin section with the San Diego Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Britt Festival Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA and Civic Orchestra of Chicago.

An avid supporter of contemporary music, Owen has given the world premiere performances of Cody McVey’s Violin Concerto as soloist, Lightning Jar for solo violin, and A Scarlet Gap, Noa Beazley’s String Quartet and Nick Bergstrom’s Thalassophobia for violin and electronics. As composer, Owen has also premiered four works for solo violin, four electronic pieces and two string quartets, Poem in Four Parts and Achillean Romance.

As a chamber musician, Owen is a founding member of the Evermore String Quartet, a musical collective that aims to perform in uncommon spaces. He has had the pleasure of working closely with the Dover, Miró, and Spektral string quartets and has also played for members of the Cavani, Jupiter, Mivos, Tesla, Vermeer and New Orford string quartets, as well as the Zodiac Trio, Fifth House Ensemble and Alarm Will Sound in master classes and coachings.

Owen has played solo for great musicians such as Noah Bendix-Balgley, Robert Chen, David Kim, Giora Schmidt, Alex Kerr, Frank Huang, Robin Bollinger, Yumi Hwang-Williams, Gerardo Ribeiro and many others. Owen earned a bachelor of music degree from The University of Texas at Austin as a student of Brian Lewis and a master of music degree from Northwestern University as a student of Blair Milton. He currently plays on a violin made by Robert Clemens in 2022 and a bow made by Ron Forrester in 2024.