Violist Amelia Hollander Ames is passionate about bringing music to all audiences via performance, education and collaboration. She is the founder of the musicians’ collective Con Vivo Music, which presents adventurous, excellent and free chamber music concerts in her hometown of Jersey City, NJ. For the 2023-24 school year, Amelia and her family are embarking on a “Worldschooling” year, traveling through Mexico, Europe, and Japan. Performances on the way will include a residency at the Escuela Superior de Artes en Yucatán in Mérida, where Amelia will premier a concerto written for her by Judith Alejandra Gonzalez Benitez, as well as give a solo recital and master classes. Amelia also has a short residency- a recital and masterclass- at the Conservatorio Massotti of the University of Murcia, Spain. Concerts in France, the UK, Italy and Japan are planned as well.   

Since moving to Massachusetts in 2013, Amelia has performed with many local ensembles, including the Bowie Cello Symphonic project as Principal Viola (with Maya Beiser and Evan Ziporyn: US tour and recording), A Far Cry, BMOP, BPO, Monadnock Festival String Quartet, the Portland Symphony, Radius Ensemble, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and the Vista Philharmonic, where she plays Principal Viola. She was part of the American Repertory Theater’s productions of “Crossing,” an opera by Matt Aucoin, and “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812,” and has performed at the BEMF, Monadnock, New Hampshire, and Rockport Festivals. Amelia is violist of the Craft Ensemble, the 2021 Hartford Women’s Composers Festival Ensemble-in-Residence, and the RAHA Duo, a viola-piano duo with Elaine Rombola Aveni. RAHA will release their album, Swirl, in early 2024, on New Focus Recordings, with debut recordings of music by Mathew Aucoin, Marti Epstein, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Curtis Hughes, Emily Koh, and Evan Ziporyn.

From 2004– 2007, Amelia was violist of the Israel Contemporary String Quartet and a member of Tel Aviv Soloists (“Solanei Tel Aviv”). With the Solanei, Amelia toured Austria and Switzerland, and performed with countertenor Andreas Scholl and violist Tabea Zimmermann. The ICSQ, meanwhile, was a mainstay of the Israeli new music scene, and collaborated with dozens of Israeli and American composers, premiering works by Tzvi Avni, Josef Bardanashvili, and Judd Greenstein, and crossing genre boundaries with pop music, theater and dance performances. They were featured regularly on Israeli TV, radio and in printed press, and internationally at the Singapore Arts Festival, Vancouver Jewish Music Festival, and on San Diego’s KPBS.

Amelia continues to devote a lot of her musical headspace to new music. She has collaborated with numerous composers, including Lembit Beecher, Iva Bittová, Elliot Cooper Cole, Melikah Fitzhugh, Ariel Friedman, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Lansing McLoskey, Jessie Montgomery, Osnat Netzer, Matana Roberts, Erin Rogers, Betsy Schramm, Caroline Shaw, Mazz Swift, and Judith Lang Zaimont.

Amelia can be heard on recordings released by the Naïve, New Amsterdam, Nonesuch, and Tzadik record labels, as well as on Con Vivo Music’s self-released debut CD.

Currently Amelia teaches strings in the Arlington, MA, Public Schools and at her home studio. In the summers, she is on faculty at Prelude at Point Counterpoint and the ICP BYSO (Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra) camp. She has held teaching and conducting posts at Conservatory Lab in Boston; the Third Street Music School, City and Country School, and Interschool Orchestras (whom she conducted in Carnegie Hall in 2012) in New York City; New Jersey City University in Jersey City; and Hasadna Conservatory in Jerusalem. Amelia has led workshops and master classes in Mexico with Cultures in Harmony and Cuerdas Oaxaca, an intensive strings program, with cellist Michal Shein and violinist Shaw Pong Liu. 

A graduate of the Eastman School of Music and New England Conservatory, Amelia studied viola with Martha Katz, Karen Ritscher, George Taylor, and Lisa Whitfield; and improvisation with Dominique Eade, Joe Maneri, John McNeil, Joe Morris and Hankus Netsky.

Amelia lives in Arlington, MA with her husband Christopher, two young sons, and catahoula leopard dog (yes, that’s a real breed!).