violinist / teacher / songwriter / writer / teaching artist / violist
Melinda Rice supports students in violin and viola technique, improvisation, classical, and folk music. She was a teaching artist in the El Sistema-inspired YOLA and Harmony Project program for over thirteen years, and the conductor of Pasadena Youth Symphony Orchestra's All City Orchestra for five years, bringing that program online during pandemic quarantining. She holds certificates in the Suzuki Method, Mark O'Connor Method, Feierabend Conversational Solfege, and has studied Creative Ability Development. She holds a Multiple Subject Teaching Credential from California, and degrees from California Institute of the Arts, where she studied violin with Mark Menzies, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Philadelphia Creative and Performing Arts High School.

Melinda has two albums of original and arranged works, Let Someone In, and Before the Color Blue. She wrote the libretto to the opera Bonnie and Clyde with the composer Andrew McIntosh. She has performed with the Craft in American house band, wild Up, the Isaura String Quartet (she was their violist for three years), in The Industry's productions of Hopscotch and Galileo, and was a section violinist in the San Bernardino Symphony. She has recorded on albums including Terry De Castro's You Can't Separate Light, Downpilot's This is the Sound and Radio Ghost, Daniel Corral's Refractions (with ISQ), and wild Up's Feather & Stone and The Salt of the Earth.

Melinda supports violin and viola students across the US online, and is on the faculty at the Community Music School in Trappe, PA. She plays with the musicians of the Marian Anderson Historical Society and Museum.

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