Founder & Artistic Director

Ronda Respess, Founder & Artistic Director

Violinist Ronda Respess has been recognized for her active role in the Atlanta Symphony’s outreach programs by being awarded the UPS Community Service Chair.  She worked on the Outreach Taskforce that started and ran the Symphony outreach programs for twelve years. Deeply committed to education, she teaches privately, gives master classes, coaches chamber music, coaches the violins of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, and for many years taught for the ASO Talent Development Program.  In 2014 she was appointed as the musician representative on the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors and presently sits on the education committee. In cooperation with WGTV and the ASO, she filmed a teaching video called “Instrumental Success”. Ronda is also the Artistic Director of Franklin Pond Chamber Music, a year-around chamber music program for talented young musicians, that she founded in 2000.

In 2007 Ronda received the Loridans Arts Award given in honor of her work with Franklin Pond and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. As a former teaching affiliate at Emory University, she has performed in several chamber music concerts there and around the city. She also served as Principal Second Violin of the Atlanta Opera for eight years.

A New Jersey native, Ronda took lessons from Samuel Applebaum and went on to study with Sally Thomas and Ivan Galamian in New York. She received her Bachelor of Music in violin performance from Indiana University as a student of Daniel Guilet and Josef Gingold. She studied chamber music with Janos Starker and William Primrose at Indiana University, and Walter Trampler and Josef Silverstein at the Sarasota Music Festival. After winning a position with the ASO, she continued her study in Florida with Richard Burgin and did graduate work toward a Masters in Music Education at Georgia State University. She is the mother of Ginny (Respess) Fairchild, a professional violinist, and the adopted mother to two dogs.

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