Violist Amelia Hollander Ames (she/her) is passionate about bringing music to all audiences via performance, education and collaboration. She is the founder of the musicians’ collective Con Vivo Music, which presents adventurous, excellent and free chamber music concerts in her hometown of Jersey City, NJ. For the 2023-24 school year, Amelia and her family embarked on a “Worldschooling” year, traveling through Mexico and Europe. Performances included a residency at the Escuela Superior de Artes en Yucatán in Mérida, where Amelia premiered a concerto written for her by Judith Alejandra Gonzalez Benitez, a residency at the Conservatorio Massotti in Murcia, Spain, and concerts in France, the UK, and Italy and Japan. Recitals included the world premier of the viola version of Philip Glass’s Songs and Poems, which Amelia recorded for Glass’s label Orange Mountain Music, release upcoming. 

Amelia has performed with many Boston area ensembles, as Principal Viola with the Vista Philharmonic and Bowie Cello Symphonic project, and with A Far Cry, BMOP, BPO, Monadnock Festival String Quartet, the Portland Symphony, Radius Ensemble, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. She was part of the American Repertory Theater’s productions of “Crossing,” an opera by Matt Aucoin, and “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812,” and has performed at the BEMF, Monadnock, New Hampshire, and Rockport Festivals. 

Amelia is violist of the Craft Ensemble, the 2021 Hartford Women’s Composers Festival Ensemble-in-Residence, and the RAHA Duo, a viola-piano duo with Elaine Rombola Aveni. RAHA will release their album, Swirl, in July 2024, on New Focus Recordings, with debut recordings of music by Mathew Aucoin, Marti Epstein, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Curtis Hughes, Emily Koh, and Evan Ziporyn.

From 2004– 2007, Amelia was violist of the Israel Contemporary String Quartet and a member of Tel Aviv Soloists (“Solanei Tel Aviv”). The ICSQ was a mainstay of the Israeli new music scene, collaborating with dozens of Israeli and American composers, premiering works by Tzvi Avni, Josef Bardanashvili, and Judd Greenstein, and crossing genre boundaries with pop music, theater and dance performances. They were featured regularly on Israeli TV, radio and in printed press, and internationally at the Singapore Arts Festival, Vancouver Jewish Music Festival, and on San Diego’s KPBS.

A graduate of the Eastman School of Music and New England Conservatory, Amelia studied viola with Martha Katz, Karen Ritscher, George Taylor, and Lisa Whitfield; and improvisation with Dominique Eade, Joe Maneri, John McNeil, Joe Morris and Hankus Netsky.

Amelia lives in Arlington, MA with her husband Christopher and two sons.

Contact Amelia at Amelia@SemiosisQuartet.com. For more about Amelia visit https://ameliaames.com/