Jared was born in Salem, Oregon, one of three children born to Jeffrey and Nancy Cole Ballance. Music was a primary activity in the home and all three children started lessons on violin at an early age. They were home-schooled from grade school through high school.

Jared also studied piano and viola until he was in the tenth grade. During his high school years, he studied cello with Hamilton Cheifetz and Mark Votapek and played in the Portland Youth Philharmonic. He maintained a private cello and violin studio from 1992 until 1998.

During his high school years, Ballance decided to pursue music as a career and continued his music study at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he completed in 2004 a B.Mus., with academic honors, in cello performance under Richard Aaron. During his undergraduate study he also studied viola with Jeffrey Irvine and Katherine Lewis, viola da gamba with Janet Winzenburger, and Dalcroze Eurhythmics with David Brown.

While at CIM, Ballance performed in its orchestra for five years in many positions, including principal cello. In 1998 and from 2001-2003, he participated in The Quartet Program, a seven-week chamber music summer program in which he studied with nationally renowned cello teachers, members of major professional string quartets, and celebrated professional chamber music coaches. In 2002 he also attended The Quartet Program in Vienna, an intensive three-week summer chamber music program in Vienna, Austria, at which he studied with prominent European teachers and chamber music performers.

After completing his undergraduate degree, Ballance continued graduate study in cello performance for another year at CIM, completing an M.Mus. in 2005. From 2004 to 2006, he served in the summers as a teaching assistant to Richard Aaron, Desmond Hoebig, Allison Wells, and Zvi Plesser at the Encore School for Strings, a school he had first attended as a student in 1997 and 1998. He was also chosen to perform chamber music on the Encore Blue ribbon concert series with guest soloists.

In 2004, he was invited to perform George Roy's Serenade for Solo Cello at a celebration of the composer's 85^th birthday held at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Donald Rosenberg, music critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer praised the performance, observing that he "played the work with dramatic and poetic panache."

Ballance started doctoral study at Eastman School of Music in 2005. From the beginning of his study there, he taught cello and music theory to undergraduate music majors and cello to non-music majors. In addition to his work on a DMA in cello performance and literature, he also pursued an M.A. in music theory pedagogy.

In Ballance's study at Eastman, Alan Harris was his principal professor and supervisor in his DMA studies and Steven Laitz his principal professor for his M.A. in music theory. While at Eastman, he taught aural skills and written theory classes for undergraduate music performance and education majors. He also taught cello to undergraduate music majors and non-majors at the University of Rochester. One of his former cello students, Glenna Curren, was a winner in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra competitions and is currently a cello performance major at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

Ballance is a certified Dalcroze Eurhymics teacher. After his earlier work at CIM, he continued his studies in this area with Dr. Robert Abramson and Daniel Cataneo at the Juilliard School, where he received a Dalcroze Certificate, and with Anne Farber and Lisa Parker at the Longy School of Music. While at Eastman, he taught Dalcroze Eurhythmics classes privately for high school and Eastman undergraduate and graduate students. He has also taught Dalcroze workshops for professional music teachers and performers.

Ballance's first doctoral recital was titled In the Aftermath of World War II: Sonatas by Elliott Carter (1948), Prokofiev (1949), and Ligeti (1948). His second recital was Complete Works for Cello and Piano by Felix Mendelssohn.

For his 2008 DMA lecture recital, Ballance presented Forbidden Music from Nazi Germany: Music by Gideon Klein, Erwin Schulhoff, Hans Krása, and Olivier Messiaen. The presentation included music of composers censured for racial, religious, or political reasons by the Nazi government, including works composed and premiered by Klein, Krása, and Messiaen in prison camps.

For over a decade Ballance has performed extensively as a recitalist and soloist and as a member of a number of chamber music groups. In 2002, Ballance organized and performed in a concert at Case Western Reserve University that featured twelve compositions for solo cello and one for seven cellos that were written to honor Paul Sacher's 75^th birthday. The composers of those works were ones the noted Swiss conductor Sacher had promoted during his career.

Ballance, who is married to Ruth Marie Bridge, a professional violinist, concertizes with her as the Ballance Duet. They also perform with Coleen Hood, a pianist, as the Brandywine Trio.

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