Ingrid Bock

Instrument: Cello

Musical director and coach of Amanticello is RPO cellist Ingrid Bock, who is also the principal cellist of the Rochester Chamber Orchestra and the founder and director of Fortissimo! - a non-profit chamber music organization providing study and performance opportunities for area music students. She loves to teach, and has a class of inspired, and inspiring, private students. She is a founding member of the Cello Divas, a boundary-stretching cello quartet that provides her the opportunity to perform unusual and challenging music and to develop her arranging skills. She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and the Performer’s Certificate, from the Eastman School of Music.

With the RPO since: I've played intermittently in various capacities since 1979, when I started as a sub under David Zinman.

My earliest musical memory is of my parents singing to me, my mother in English and my father in German.

I knew I would make music my career when I went to my first Buffalo Philharmonic concert and heard the orchestra tune up. To this day, that sound still makes me shiver a little bit with anticipation.

Most influential teachers: Paul Katz, the cellist of the former Cleveland Quartet, helped me through most of my formative years. I began studying with him when I was 14, and he was my teacher at the Eastman School of Music. He instilled in me a great love of chamber music.

Favorite composer: I love Mahler. My favorite pieces to play are Mendelssohn's Octet and his Italian Symphony. If I were stuck on a desert island, I would want the Mozart Requiem to listen to.

What do you most enjoy about performing? For me, there is no substitute for those electric moments when you sense the connection, not only amongst the people playing, which is already a huge thrill, but between the performers and the audience. I feel part of the whole human experience at those times, when I think that people were being moved in the same way two or three hundred years ago, and that they will continue to be moved, long after I'm gone.

What is your favorite part of being a member of the RPO? I feel honored to play with people who have never, in good times and bad, forgotten the reason we're there, which is that we love the orchestral repertoire and want to bring it to life the absolute best we can, so that people listening will love it, too.

I look forward to going to the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival because seeing the gorgeous mountain backdrop while playing an already powerful symphony adds another dimension to the musical experience.

When I'm not onstage, you might find me in beautiful Ellison Park, walking my dogs, teaching chamber music at Nazareth College or rehearsing with my chamber music group, the Cello Divas.

I always thought it might be fun to be a veterinarian.

I love to dine at Appleby's, where they have a wonderful teriyaki salmon.

My favorite thing about Rochester is the fact that one can drive for just a few minutes and be surrounded by lovely countryside.

What do you think is the Orchestra's most important role in our community? If we can be a part of passing along that butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling that I get when I hear a symphony orchestra tuning up, I'll be proud. There are things that one feels in playing, listening to and understanding a great symphony that can't be expressed in words, and to see someone's face light up with that shared experience is one of the joys of life.