Ruth Tumpalan 

ABOUT

Ruth Tumpalan is a violinist and music educator originally from Manila, Philippines and is currently based in the greater New York City area. She recently won first place in the American Protege Piano and Strings International Competition where she was featured to perform as soloist in Carnegie Weill Recital Hall. Aside from this, she was also a prize winner in the Concert Artists International Competition and in the New York International Concours where she was also awarded the New York State Assembly Award. She was formerly the Assistant Concertmaster of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (the Philippine’s national orchestra) and has won national and international grants and scholarships to attend music festivals such as Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival and the Asian Youth Orchestra where she did two summers of concert tours to several cities in Asia such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Hanoi, among others. 

With full scholarship and teaching assistantship, Ruth completed her masters degree at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she studied with Elizabeth Chang. In graduate school, she became part of the UMass Graduate Quartet and occasionally led the Opus One (a conductor-less orchestra) as concertmaster. For her undergraduate, she finished Bachelor of Music from the University of the Philippines with cum laude distinction, where she studied with Joseph Esmilla, Arturo Molina, and Sergio Esmilla. 

Ruth has had the privilege of taking solo and chamber masterclasses/lessons from well known musicians such as Christoph Poppen, members of the Juilliard String Quartet, Gilles Vonsattel, etc. She has also played with some of the great artists both in classical and popular music such as Wang Jian, Alban Gerhardt, Jaime Laredo, and Michael Buble. She has been invited to play for events for dignitaries and was also featured soloist by the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra and the Manila Symphony. She has performed in key concert halls such as Carnegie Hall Perelman Stage, Lincoln Center, Tokyo Opera City, The Esplanade, and more. 

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Believing that music connects people regardless of background, Ruth promotes cultural diversity in her performances whether in a small community or in big concert halls. She has a violin-percussion duo with her husband, Cyd Tumpalan, is a regular faculty at the Lindeblad School of Music where she loves instilling the love of music and spreading culture through music to her students.