Svend Rønning

Chair, Stringed Instruments; Applied Violin Lessons; Director String Kaleidoscope, Member Regency String Quartet

Violinist Svend Rønning enjoys a distinguished career as an artistic director, chamber musician, concertmaster, educator, and soloist. He serves as Professor of Music and Coordinator of String Studies at Pacific Lutheran University where he also serves as a member of PLU’s IHON faculty. His prior teaching appointments include the Eastern Music Festival, the Shenandoah Conservatory, and the University of Virginia. One of the most active performers in the Puget Sound region, Dr. Rønning is Concertmaster of Symphony Tacoma and Artistic Director of the Second City Chamber Series, Tacoma’s award-winning producer of chamber music concerts and educational programs. His activities also extend to early music, including performances on period instruments with the Puget Sound Consort.

As a performer, Dr. Rønning has appeared worldwide at venues and festivals including the Aspen Music Festival, Spoleto U.S.A., Pacific Music Festival in Japan, Jerusalem Winter Classics, and Wintergreen Music Festival. He has served as Concertmaster of the San Jose Symphony, Spoleto U.S.A. Chamber Orchestra, Charlottesville Symphony, and Tacoma Opera Orchestra, and has appeared as soloist with the Prague Radio Symphony, Arctic Chamber Orchestra, Symphony Tacoma, Orchestra Seattle, and numerous regional orchestras. His solo repertoire spans the great concertos of the canon as well as works by Alban Berg, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklós Rózsa, and concertos composed for him by Jerry Kracht and Walter Ross.

An active chamber musician, he has performed in series and festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad, including Berlin’s Leo Kestenberg Musikschule, the Methow Music Festival, the Mostly Nordic Chamber Series in Seattle, and the Washington State Governor’s Mansion Chamber Series. He has also appeared in residencies at major universities and conservatories worldwide, and has taught at the University of Oxford as part of PLU’s IHON-Oxford study abroad program.

A native of the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Rønning holds degrees from Pacific Lutheran University and Yale University, where his principal teachers included Syoko Aki, Sidney Harth, Jaap Schröder, and Ann Tremaine.

Equally devoted to his work as a teacher, Dr. Rønning has built a studio of students who now carry his influence across the musical world. His protégés have gone on to further studies at leading institutions including Indiana University, DePaul University, the Yale School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, Boston University, the University of Washington, and the North Carolina School of the Arts. They hold positions in major orchestras such as the Virginia Symphony, the Lexington Philharmonic, the Roanoke Symphony, and Symphony Tacoma; others teach at universities and schools across North America. Several have forged paths in popular music, performing with groups such as the Dave Matthews Band and the Seattle Rock Orchestra. Many more have drawn upon the discipline and creativity of their musical training in fields as diverse as film direction, arts administration, law, medicine, and urban planning.

Reflecting on his teaching, Dr. Rønning notes: “The PLU community is an ideal place to pursue music passionately, professionally, or both. I admire my students that do so much through music to shape the lives and communities of the future.”