Biography
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Born
31 January 1967 (age 57)
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Born In
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Born in 1967 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Rolston was the daughter of two classical musicians. Her father, Thomas Rolston, a violinist, set up Canada's first Suzuki music instruction program. Her mother was a pianist. Both taught music at the University of Alberta. They gave Shauna a one-eighth-size cello for her second birthday. Before long it was clear that she had the makings of a serious musician. She was enrolled for lessons with Claude Kenneson, who later wrote a book about musical child prodigies. At age five, Rolston gave a concert in London, England.
She attended the Geneva Conservatory in Switzerland at age fourteen. She studied with Pierre Fournier, and later at the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh (England) where she also studied with William Pleeth. At sixteen, she played at New York's Town Hall, with her mother at the piano.
Following her formative studies at the Banff Centre and abroad, Rolston earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University, where she majored in art history. She then earned a master's degree in music at Yale, studying with cellist Aldo Parisot and serving as his teaching assistant. During that time she also served as artistic director of music at the Yale Club in New York City.
The recording that really put Rolston on the map was a 1995 CBC release on which she performed a technically difficult cello concerto by British composer Sir Edward Elgar, backed by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. Classic CD magazine compared Rolston to one of the all-time great cellists, Jacqueline du Pre, and declared that Rolston had offered one of the finest performances of that work in the past two decades.
In addition to performing her mainstream repertoire, however, Rolston became an unusually strong advocate of contemporary classical music. She commissioned new pieces from a wide variety of composers including Gavin Bryars, Luciano Berio, Mark Anthony Turnage, and other top names on the contemporary music scene. One new work in particular, Douglas Schmidt's Smokin' F Holes, attracted wide attention. Written for amplified cello, accordion, piano, and drum kit, it was intended to highlight Rolston's technical abilities. A video that accompanied the piece, a novelty in the classical music world, showed her playing her cello underwater.
Between concerts, Rolston has served as professor of music and co-head of the string department at the University of Toronto.
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