Ruth Gelsinger, Pianist

Ruth McClure Gelsinger was born in Malden, Massachusetts in 1955.

Her family moved to the Midcoast in 1969 and during high school, she became in involved with her first music theater production, The Pajama Game.

Ruth attended the University of Maine at Orono and receive her Bachelor of Music in Performance degree in 1977 with a major in piano and a minor in Violincello.

She returned to the College of Education as a special student to complete her course work for Maine teacher certification for Choral Music Education grades K-12. She composed music for children’s theater, underscored, and played piano and vocal coached for the Camden Shakespeare Company and began teaching piano full time in 1982.

Ruth again returned to UMO and completed her Master’s in Music Education in 1990. She studied advanced piano techniques with Baycka Voronietsky, Professor of Piano, and had extensive training in the two-piano repertoire. Ruth studied Schenckerian Analysis, Counterpoint and Fugue, under the direction of Phil Nesbit, Prof. of Music Theory.

Staring in the mid- 90’s while continuing with her regular job of teaching piano, Ruth became more involved in music theater in Belfast when local community theater Belfast Masker’s presented “Angry Housewives” directed by Robert Hitt. Ruth co-music directed this show with then new husband, John and went on to direct and perform in over ten musical productions there from 1994 to 2006.

Ruth has been self-employed for her entire adult life as a piano teacher, accompanist,classical and show pianist and choral singer here in the midcoast. She has composed works for Piano, Oboe, and Bassoon as well as solo piano and for music theater.

Along with her husband, John, she owns and manages a nine-unit apartment building in Belfast. She and husband, John, began the planning and construction of the Northport Music Theater in 2005 and 2006, and opened the theater in June of 2007.

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