LEE RUDA [이루다] is a pure Korean name, uniquely created by her father. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Ruda has truly embodied her name, achieving remarkable success from an early age and becoming internationally acclaimed. Ruda made her concerto debut at the age of 6 where she was the youngest winner of the World Symphony Orchestra Competition. This debut marked the beginning of her understanding of music as a powerful means of communication and satisfaction for not just herself, but for the audience and collaborators. Ruda has always stayed true to her own creativity, travelling on a musical journey that has been uniquely hers. She won the Seoul President’s Award at age twelve with her first composition, performed by the band she created. Following her stage-career started with great success of receiving the first and grand prizes including Strad Magazine Award, Music Journal Competition, KCO Competition, Music Education Newspaper Competition, Korea Mozart Competition, Young Soloist Competition among others, she had a winner recital at Carnegie Hall in 2014 and a year after performed the J.F.Kennedy Center Honors Gala 2015 in Washington D.C. where she played with Yo Yo Ma and Pamela Frank with President Obama in the audience which was nationally televised in the United States.
Awarded a full scholarship from Yale University School of Music, Ruda has served as a co- concertmaster of Yale Philharmonia and has toured with maestro John Adams at the Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in New York. She has performed under the batons of renowned conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Krzysztof Penderecki, Peter Oundjian, Andris Nelsons, and worked with esteemed artists including Shmuel Ashkenasi, Joseph Silverstein, Igor Ozim, Syoko Aki, Cho-Liang Lin, Lynn Harrel, Emerson, Brantano, Orion, Tokyo String Quartet among others, while getting invitation from prestigious festivals such as Tanglewood, Kronberg, Norfolk, Banff, Great Mountain in PyeongChang, Tongyeong, Taipei, Euro Arts, Hong Kong Chamber Music Festival and Hong Kong Arts Festival. Recently at the Vivaldi Festival in Venice, Italy, she performed her earnest interpretation of four Vivaldi concertos and received great acclaim. Ruda have often performed her original and arranged pieces in concerts, including the Korean folk song Arirang which she arranged as an encore at Chungpodo 2016 project in which three violinist friends from Yale traveled the Korean Peninsula performing Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas at historically relevant venues.
While at Yale, Ruda served as a teaching assistant in the East Asian Language and Literature department, driven by an interest in the profound relationship between music and language. Growing up in a home filled with musicians and melodies, which nurtured her emotional connection to sound, she hopes to provide transformative musical experiences for her students and audiences. Since 2023, Ruda has been the Artistic Director of Young Virtuosi and Virtuoso Fiesta, drawing on the creative energy from her music tours to pioneer projects that transcend boundaries and connect communities worldwide. Her upcoming projects includes Four Seasons: A Journey of 1725-2025, which incorporates distinctive seasonal elements to inspire nature preservation, highlighting the beauty of the seasons and the impacts of climate change on individuals' mental and emotional well-being. Ruda always explores new collaborations across various art forms, expanding the classical market to reach wider audiences and create a more inclusive world. She believes that all her dreams can become reality, much like the meaning of her name.
When Ruda isn’t playing the violin, she is riding the waves. The delicate balance required in wake-surfing and the dynamic nature of the waves are very similar to violin playing. The key is to relax and happily feel its movement until the waves pass—this philosophy also applies to her life.
