ROSS, Michelle Barzel

Michelle Barzel Ross is a Grammy Award-winning violinist, composer, and improviser, whose music-making has been hailed as "affecting" (The New Yorker), "gorgeous" (The New York Times), and "nobly shaped and impeccably sustained" (The San Francisco Chronicle).

As a composer and improviser, Michelle is lauded as a “formidable composer…with fearlessness of expression” (Textura), her works praised as “very effective” (The Strad) and like a “fever dream” (A Closer listen). Michelle has been commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, Juilliard String Quartet, The Jasper String Quartet, The Perlman Music Program, and her works have been premiered at leading venues such as the Palau Musica in Barcelona, Vienna's MusikVerein, Paris’s Thêatre les Bouffes du Nord. Michelle’s second string quartet 'Birds on the Moon' was commissioned by the Juilliard String Quartet and Chamber Music Napa Valley, and is dedicated to the ensemble’s beloved late violist, Roger Tapping. 'Birds on the Moon' recently had its world premiere in California, and will be featured by the JSQ at MusikVerein’s 2026 Beethoven Festival. Passionate about expanding the bounds of contemporary music as both a performer and pedagogue, Michelle is faculty at Lucerne Festival Contemporary. In November 2024, Michelle's collaborative orchestral vignette with composer Stephen Mennotti and Orchesterschule Insel 'Ein Leid auf den Lippen: Carry the Sun within your Heart' toured Switzerland; the work is dedicated to the children who perished during the Holocaust at Theresienstadt and is a companion piece to Hans Krasa’s Brundibar.

A self-taught improviser across genres from baroque to contemporary, Michelle is a featured artist improvising with her longtime friend Jon Batiste on Movement 11’ from his Grammy winning Album of the Year 'We Are'. Michelle’s compositions have been recorded on Naïve Records by Christian-Pierre la Marca and Jean-Frédéric Neuberger, Carr-Petrova Duo, Arlen Hlusko, Sæunn Thorsteinsdottír, Caitlin Sullivan and Long Echo Records.