Meet the RIT Orchestra

Michael Ruhling

Conductor

Michael E. Ruhling is an associate professor of Fine Arts/Music in the College of Liberal Arts at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology, where he has taught a variety of courses in music history and appreciation, and conducted the RIT Orchestra, since 1998. He has also taught courses at the Eastman School of Music, Goshen College, Huntington College, and The Catholic University of America. He received his Ph.D. in historical musicology from The Catholic University of America in 2000, and holds masters degrees in orchestral conducting (U. of Missouri) and music history (U. of Notre Dame). From 2004 to 2009 Dr. Ruhling served on the conducting and lecture faculty of the Classical Music Festival held each August in Eisenstadt, Austria. He has appeared as guest conductor of the Brighton Symphony Orchestra, Prince George's Philharmonic, Finger Lakes Symphony, UNLV Symphony and Opera, Rochester's Air de Cour, and several other orchestras and choirs throughout the country. His book Johann Peter Salomon's Scores of Four Haydn Symphonies: Edition with Commentary was published by the Edwin Mellen Press in 2004, and his essay on the symphonies of Michael Haydn will appear in The Symphonic Repertoire, Vol. 1: The Eighteenth Century Symphony to be published by the Indiana University Press in 2010. He has delivered numerous papers and presented many lecture-performances on 18th and 19th century repertoire and performance practices, and was named the 2008-2009 Christopher Hogwood Historically Informed Performance Fellow by the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, this country's oldest performing ensemble. Dr. Ruhling is the first president of the Haydn Society of North America, is a member of the Haydn Society of Great Britain's Committee of Honour, and recently served as secretary-treasurer of the Society for Eighteenth Century Music. He lives in Irondequoit, New York with his wife Julie, an accomplished pianist, and sons Alexander, Peter, and Nicholas.

Carolyn Goodman

Concert Master

Coming from a family of scientists and musicians, Carolyn Wenk Goodman decided on violin as a career at the urging of her teacher and mentor Bronislaw Gimpel. Her later teachers included Paul Rolland, Andre Gertler and master classes with Isaac Stern.

After completing a M.Mus. in violin/viola performance and pedagogy at the University of Illinois, Carolyn went to Europe for five years to play in the first violin section of the Amsterdam Philharmonic. Since returning to America, she has been active in New York City, performing such diverse music as orchestral, chamber, opera, ballet, Broadway shows and jazz, while specializing in American contemporary music in a long running concert series at Carnegie Hall. She considers herself fortunate to have performed with and learned from such greats as David Oistrakh, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Rubinstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Yo-Yo Ma, Winton Marsalis (Jazz at Lincoln Center) Ray Charles, Eubie Blake, and, presently, with Itzaak Perlman for a three year period. Carolyn has recorded for film, radio, TV and on CD with, among others, Phillip Glass, Brian Eno, Keith Jarrett,and Sir Roland Hanna on Nonesuch, London and Philips labels. Carolyn lives with her family in Pittsford and enjoys traveling to Massachussetts to watch her daughter Sarah play softball for Smith College.