Elena Ruehr

American composer Elena Ruehr has developed a highly eclectic style that engages with historical moments from the medieval period to the present. Her work has gained adherents both within and outside of academic settings. Ruehr was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1963, but moved with her family to the small town of Houghton, in the state's isolated Upper Peninsula, in early childhood. Her father, a mathematician, gave her an inclination toward puzzles that influenced the often complex underlying structures of her music. Both parents were amateur musicians; her mother taught her piano beginning at age four. Another mentor was Melvin Kangas, a composer and player of the Finnish kantele stringed instrument in the heavily Finnish Houghton area. Ruehr herself began composing as a child. She attended the University of Michigan, where she studied with William Bolcom and participated in the school's Javanese gamelan and African drumming ensemble. Ruehr went on for graduate studies in composition at the Juilliard School in New York, where her principal teachers were Vincent Persichetti and Bernard Rands. She received her M.M. degree from Juilliard in 1987. Several major awards opened doors for Ruehr: she was a Guggenheim Fellow and a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. Ruehr was the first composer-in-residence of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. She has said of her music: "I have a philosophy that I developed in my twenties that guides my musical choices: the surface is simple, the structure complex." She also had taken inspiration from a wide variety of historical styles. Much of her music responds to literary texts, but not all of this is vocal: her all-instrumental String Quartet No. 5 draws its program from a novel by Ann Patchett. Ruehr's cello concerto Cloud Atlas is named for David Mitchell's popular novel. She has written much of her music in response to commissions from groups including the Cypress String Quartet (three of her six quartets), which issued a cycle of her string quartets in 2018. Her music has been recorded on the Avie and Albany labels. Ruehr has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1991. She is married and has one daughter.
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