About

Rose Martin is a sound artist and educator centered on percussion and voice. She is interested in interconnecting the roles of care, healing, and play within her creative practice and her community, including spaces of education, live performance, and the recording arts. Collaborative improvisation and solo song-making with vibraphone, voice, and found objects defines Rose’s current musical practice. Recent creative-research work touches on the impacts of emotional and relational labor in musical and visual art spaces and defining what relational listening can mean in the context of graduate music school.

As an educator at the University of Washington, Portland State University, and with Seattle Percussion Works, Rose grounds her pedagogy in empathy, creativity, and collaboration. She is honored to lead and learn alongside musicians, deepening a shared understanding of sound, silence, listening, and self-expression. A great privilege of Rose’s life has been her work as a caregiver. Pragmatically, her musicking may be offered to those she supports as an intuitive & healing offering, though in a larger sense Rose views much of her art-making through a lens of healing and care.

In a 2023 collaboration with visual artist Nate Clark, Rose created the sound component that was installed alongside Clark's sculptural installation, (In)Form, at MadArt Studio. Weaving together intricate found object improvisations with field recordings, she built sonic layers that converse with Clark’s intentions to center the senses and return to the body.

Rose holds a Master of Music from University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Denver, Lamont School of Music. With deep gratitude, Rose has studied with John Kinzie, Dr. Sarah Morelli, Ghanaian master drummer Johnson Kemeh, Ghanaian master of gyil Aaron Bebe Sukura, Ayano Kataoka, Stuart Saunders Smith, and Bonnie Whiting. Rose is a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA.