As of 2025, Ross Bellenoit has forged quite a career path, racking up impressive credits as a guitarist, composer and record producer. After moving to Philadelphia in 2003, Bellenoit quickly became the leading axe-man for a thriving singer-songwriter scene that spawned Amos Lee, Birdie Busch, Chris Kasper, and Adrien Reju. Since 2010, he's been making his mark as a songwriter himself, having released six full-length LP’s of original material, including two instrumental jazz albums and one album of covers.

Raised outside of Northampton, MA, Bellenoit trained on classical guitar & viola for ten years before studying jazz guitar at the UArts in Philadelphia — but Bellenoit is not the sort of musician who lets his studies do the talking. A spontaneous, in-the-moment improviser and consummate team player, Bellenoit has trained himself to stay on his toes, and to anticipate the un-obvious. "If there's one thing that I try to keep aware of," Bellenoit says, "it's the song's temperament. No matter the style or context of the song, you have to surrender yourself completely to what the music is telling you in the moment. Serve the song, and the song will serve you."

Since 2014, Bellenoit has been one third of the futuristic funk-fusion trio, Muscle Tough. Having thought of the band name as a joke for it’s onomatopoeiaic resemblance to the Hebrew phrase “mazel tov!”, Muscle Tough grew quickly into being a staple on the jazz/jam scene for festivals all along the Northeast corridor. After 11 years of touring the circuit, they have shared the stage with such musical legends as John Medeski (MMW), John Fishman (Phish), and DJ Logic, along with various members of Lotus, Dopapod and Turkuaz.

Bellenoit has produced many great albums for talent coming out of Philadelphia, including Caroline Quinn, Jay Carlis, Bright Kelly, IVA, Ryan Tennis, Ami Yares, Eric McGarry, Dan McCain, and many others. He's also produced a large amount of music with Alex Mitnick for various children's entertainment outlets such as Toniebox, Omoberry, and PlayMobil.

As a session musician, he has contributed to a wide array of albums — rock, jazz, gospel, R&B, country, even a song about cheeseburgers written for Philadelphia Inquirer food critic Craig Laban. He's worked as a guitarist with renowned producers John Carter Cash, Glenn Barratt, Phil Nicolo, Alan Evans, Eric Wortham, Brian McTear and Devin Greenwood — and for the past 17 years has been producing records for a variety of artists himself.

Bellenoit has also racked up a considerable amount of touring experience, most notably touring with Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello as a member of Amos Lee's band. He's made multiple regional tours with The Sweetback Sisters (appearing on NPR's "A Prairie Home Companion" and "Mountain Stage"), fellow Philadelphian songwriter Birdie Busch, and has toured internationally several times with the Joseph Parsons Band since 2008, and also as a solo artist.

In 2017, he was commissioned to write a suite of original music by the Philadelphia Jazz Project, yielding a song-suite utilizing the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca. The same year, he was hired by the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art as music director for their Centennial Concert celebrating 100 years of music in Philadelphia.