Biography

Betsy Marlene Ross is an American pianist, music teacher and musicologist from Hinsdale, Illinois. The only child of Nellie and Lowell Ross, Betsy was raised in a musical household, her father singing in the local church choir, and her mother a keen pianist. She started learning piano at the age of seven, and upon leaving school was a student of music at Andrews University, followed by Chicago Musical College, where she obtained both a BMus and MMus in the early 1970s.

In 1977, Betsy became the first woman to be awarded a scholarship at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in North Carolina. This provided her with the opportunity to study at the School of Scottish Studies for a year, during which she carried out extensive fieldwork in Kinloch Rannoch - the village where her maternal grandmother had been born.

These recordings are a fine example of local oral history and folklore, and the musical recordings carried out in 1978 formed the basis of her Ph.D. in musicology which she completed at Claremont Graduate University in California in 1992.

In 1994, Betsy relocated to Arkansas, where she was an assistant professor at Lyon College, Batesville. She also taught musicianship and accompanied the choir. Today, she teaches piano privately to selected students in Mountain View, Arkansas - a city renowned for its folk and traditional music scene.