FITKIN BAND
In 2009 Graham Fitkin put together a stellar line-up of players to form a new nine-piece band. The music is fast, loud, with a hint of gypsy bawdiness and as The Guardian put it ‘a delight that defied all fashionable labels and simply conjured its own whirlygig of ideas with such spontaneity and control’. Ruth performs with FITKIN on bray harp and lever harp.
THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC
One of the early cinema classics, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (1928) has been hailed a towering masterpiece of silent film and inspired countless generations of filmmakers including Sergio Leone. Now Portishead’s Adrian Utley and Will Gregory of Goldfrapp have created a new score, soundtracking the powerful and moving story of Joan’s trial, imprisonment, torture and execution. The live performance takes place alongside a screening of the film, conducted by Charles Hazlewood, members of the Monteverdi Choir, 6 guitars and Ruth on 3 harps.
For decades the original film negative was feared lost in a fire until, incredibly, it was discovered in a cupboard in a Norwegian mental institution in 1981..
THE ENCHANTED PALACE
Ruth’s harp music is featured in theatre company Wildworks spectacular installation in Kensington Palace, in the Room of Palace Time alongside metal work pieces designed by Boudicca.
In this innovative ‘animated exhibition’, set against the backdrop of the magnificent State Apartments, visitors discover the hidden stories of Kensington Palace. Featuring specially commissioned contemporary fashion installations (by leading designers and artists including Vivienne Westwood, William Tempest and Boudicca) woven into fascinating tales from the palace’s history, The Enchanted Palace enables visitors to explore the extraordinary lives of Kensington’s former royal residents.
THE OPERATORS AT THE EXCHANGE
In December 2009 The Operators opened at The Exchange in Penzance. This major new art/sound work is the result of a collaboration between Ruth and visual artist Alessandra Ausenda. It involves a huge dress, a battery of sewing machines and live sewing machinists at work underneath the dress as it rotates. The Operators involves highly integrated sound and visuals, and explores the extremely exploitative working conditions of much of the garment industry and the criminal network which often surrounds it.
GOLDFRAPP
In 2008 Ruth toured with Goldfrapp in UK, Europe, Australia and USA. She played wire harp, lever harp and keyboard on the tour. Her wire harp is featured on the Goldfrapp album ‘Seventh Tree’.
THE UNCOMMON HARP
The Uncommon Harp is a project involving both performances and commissions, and resulted in Ruth’s first solo album. Ruth is passionate about expanding the repertoire of the small harp and continuing a long tradition of harping in the British Isles. more…
KAPLAN
George Kaplan is the central character in Hitchcock’s film North By Northwest. And yet he doesn’t exist.
The idea that George Kaplan existed outside the original film began to fester in composer Graham Fitkin’s mind and inspired a musical and visual performance involving two live musicians and video. more…
STILL WARM
Ruth’s interest in expanding the sound world of the harp has led her to use electronics increasingly in her music. Her project with composer Graham Fitkin continues this trend and features three harps. more…
SOLO SPOTLIGHT
In March 2007 Ruth was was one of four solo artists invited to perform in the Wapping Project’s Solo Spotlights series. The series focuses on cutting edge music in the atmospheric setting of London’s Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. Artistic director Rolf Hind curated a series of solo evenings which enabled the performers to shape their own events in a site specific setting. Against a spectacular backdrop of hydraulic machinery harpist Ruth Wall, harpsichordist Jane Chapman, violinist David Alberman and percussionist Damien Harron conjured new sounds from their instruments, using new performance techniques, electronics, movement and theatre. Each artist explored new territory for their instrument in events that provided a feast for the senses, with stage and lighting design by multimedia artist Julia Bardsley.
Ruth performed on lever harp, bray harp and Russian gusli. She premiered works by David Lang, Joe Cutler, Richard Glover, Liz Johnson and Christopher Best as well as a recently commissioned work by Laurence Crane.
POSTCARDS FROM HEAVEN
Fellow harpist Rhodri Davies curated an evening of John Cage’s music for harps and other instruments at the BALTIC in Gateshead. Ruth joined Rhodri and harpists from the Royal Northern College of Music and Manchester Harp Ensemble for a performance of Cage’s rarely performed Postcards from Heaven, for 1-20 harps. The piece was written in 1982 and first performed at the Walker Arts Centre in Minneapolis.
STILL WARM – FITKIN WALL
STILL WARM has been released
‘Immaculate’ BBC Music Magazine
‘Virtuosic mini-concertos’ The Guardian
‘Harps set free into a wonderland of synths and sampling’ Metro
‘Astonishing album’ Resident-Music.com
‘Majestic harp melodies’ Musera
WILL GREGORY MOOG ENSEMBLE
Ruth performs on moog and various synthesizers in composer Will Gregory’s moog ensemble. In 2005 in Bath the nine piece moog orchestra, including Portishead’s Adrian Utley, jazz soloist Django Bates, sax player Simon Haram and Ruth performed the Brandenburg concertos on moogs plus a new work by Will to accompany a shot of Tim Henmann’s massively slowed down serve. In 2010 they played at the South Bank in Bernard Herrmann’s soundtrack to The Day the Earth Stood Still, and a new work by Will, ‘Journey into the Sky’ conducted by Charles Hazlewood.
This formed the basis of Will’s opera Piccard in Space, which again involved the moog ensemble (Ruth playing mini moog), alongside the BBC Concert orchestra in March 2011.
more…
WYNTER
In 2001 Ruth was again installed at the Tate Gallery performing works composed by Graham Fitkin and inspired by the work of Bryan Wynter.
The music involved both natural and manufactured sounds, predominantly the sounds of the harp and of water. Sometimes these sources are very evident, and at other times Fitkin’s use of ring modulation and stereo delay alter the sound to such an extent that the initial characteristics are difficult to perceive. Specific music was carefully timed to be heard in particular rooms in the gallery which were exhibiting Wynter’s work.
PACKET OF SEEDS
‘If you had to leave your house in a hurry, never to return, what would you take with you? Think carefully, for the decision is a grave one that will have consequences in the topography of your life, past and future. What would you take? Photographs? Letters? Anything that could prove that what you are about to leave did once exist? I took a bag of soil and a packet of seeds. I had them still when I landed on this island, a fortuitous arrival that came to feel like a homecoming, in time. And what would you do? Leave a note? Close the shutters? Lock the door and pocket the key, hoping to return? I knew there would be no return. I scratched the names of the dead, opened the doors of the birds’ cages in the patio, and left.’
First paragraph from Packet of Seeds c. Mercedes Kemp
SANTI
In 2005 Ruth was commissioned by filmmaker Barbara Santi to compose a new score for a documentary film ‘Experiences of a Village Witch’ which explores the life of the only fully business registered witch in the UK, Cassandra Latham.
The film, shot over 5 years, follows Cassandra continuing the ancient role of wise woman in her local community of West Cornwall. Ruth worked closely with Barbara, exploring the role of the music within the documentary, and how, rather than acting as simply background music it could add another dimension to the film.
THE TATE PROJECT
The line of totality for the solar eclipse on August 11 1999 at 11.11 hit land first in West Cornwall. Tate St Ives marked this phenomenon by presenting As Dark As Light, a programme of contemporary arts events in which artists were commissioned to make new work in response to the eclipse and to the specific geography and history of the area.
Ruth and composer Graham Fitkin were invited to devise a project at the Tate Gallery, St Ives involving new work and local communities.
EDEN PROJECT
The Eden Project in Cornwall opened in 2001. Since then Ruth has performed regularly in the huge Warm Temperate Biome. Ruth has created site specific work for solo harp, and has collaborated with other musicians and artists.
BARBARA HEPWORTH PROJECT
Barbara Hepworth’s strong, graceful sculptures inspired a collaboration in 2005 between Ruth and C-Scape Dance Company.
Many of Hepworth’s sculpture’s are smooth, curved works and dinstinctive in their use of strings, creating waves of suspension and counter-tension. These scooping forms provided a starting point for choreographer Sally Williams and Ruth, and their new work focuses on flow and movement within a taut structural framework.
The work will recieve it’s first performance in Havant Arts Centre. Cornwall based sculptor Ben Barrell has recently redesigned the courtyard and created sculptures for the space which are used by the dancers in the performane of the new work.