Jennifer Rhodes received her BM in violin performance from the University of Michigan and her MM from Rice University in Houston, TX graduating cumma sum laude from both schools. She is currently the concertmaster for the East Valley Mormon Symphony Orchestra and has made recent appearances as guest concertmaster with the Chandler Symphony Orchestra and the San Tan Orchestra. Prior to her relocation to Phoenix, she was a member of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. She has also played professionally with the New Mexico, Santa Fe, New World, Hunstville, Flint, and Ann Arbor Symphonies, as well as with the Utah Festival Opera Company and Opera Southwest. She has performed with Santa Fe New Music, Classical Exposure in the east valley, the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s Education Series, the Historic Logan, Utah Tabernacle Summer Recital Series, and on violin and viola with several chamber ensembles. Her primary teachers include Kenneth Goldsmith, Kathryn Votapek, Aaron Berofsky, Marjorie Bagley, Stephen Shipps, Ted Ashton, and Janice McAllister.

As a private violin and viola teacher, Jennie served as a faculty member for the Patel Conservatory (affiliated with the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center) and the Preparatory Conservatory at Rice University, has given private instruction in school districts in Michigan, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, and Utah, and continues to maintain her private home studio. She has also served as faculty for Chamber Music in the Mountains at Mt. Lemmon in Tucson, the Utah State University Summer Music Clinic, and as a chamber coach at Rocky Ridge Music Center in Colorado. She has adjudicated and served as a clinician for orchestra festivals, solo competitions, and jury reviews. Her students have received superior rankings at solo and ensemble festivals, juries, and in local competitions, and have been selected to participate in youth and All-State Orchestras. She coordinates her students into chamber groups and often arranges outreach performances for them within the community.

Some of Jennie’s favorite projects include a brief stint in an Argentine tango band for the Michigan Argentine Tango Club, being honored by three composers each writing her a tango for violin and piano, being featured as “the fiddler” in the Utah Festival Opera Company’s production of Fiddler On the Roof, and a 2004 performance of the String Quartet No. 2 by Aaron Jay Kernis. Actively involved in arts administration, Jennie has worked for such organizations at University Musical Society (MI), Spoleto Festival USA (SC), the Institute for Education and the Arts (DC), and Rocky Ridge Music Center (CO) covering ground in education, production, programming, editing and publishing, and management departments.

Jennie is happy to be living in the Phoenix area with her husband, Matthew, and their three children: Afton, Miriam, and Spencer.