Ruby Hughes

Amidst the Shades (with Jonas Nordberg)

Introduction by Ruby Hughes:

It’s hugely exciting to be releasing my second disc together with Jonas Nordberg and Mime Brinkmann. I. have always found the sonic constellation of lute, voice and gamba in this trio particularly inspiring, and it’s been a joy to experiment together with colour and nuance through improvisation over the years. The possibilities for spontaneity and creativity in the music we have chosen feel boundless.

Our deep connection and love of Elizabethan music was the catalyst for building this program, especially the contemplative and melancholic songs of John Dowland. From this starting point we then chose and performed music by Robert Johnson and John Danyel and commissioned three composers, Errollyn Wallen, Deborah Pritchard and Cheryl Frances Hoad to write for us choosing texts by William Shakespeare.

Jonas and I had been struck by the the beauty of the anonymous medieval Corpus Christi Carol and we felt it really belonged together spiritually on this record. Combining some of Purcell’s intimate songs was also a must atmospherically and Amidst the shades and Here the deities approve were a revelation to discover.

We hope that bringing together this rich tapestry of songs will continue to inspire and celebrate music for lute and voice building on this precious legacy.
We have also devised the programme for voice and lute as much of the repertoire works just as beautifully in duo form.

Echo (with Huw Watkins)

Commissioned by & world premier recording at Carnegie Hall in 2017. Recorded for BIS in Spring 2021, due to be released Autumn 2022. Wigmore Hall performance 18 December 2022

Introduction by Ruby Hughes:

The inspiration for this programme came about through my dear friend and collaborator Huw Watkins who wrote the song cycle ‘Echo’ for me to perform at Carnegie Hall. I was drawn deeply to his setting of Rosetti’s poem Echo, how the voice and spirit of a loved one would return in dreams. I began thinking about how my favourite composers across the ages have spoken and echoed one another lovingly in their music. These echoes have had such a lasting impact on our culture, sometimes in the most nuanced and unconscious way.

It’s enlightening for me to hear how Britten and Bach’s music has had such an impact on Huw Watkins and Cheryl Frances Hoad. Then to sing their music, to sense these kindred spirit ‘echoes’ helps me imaginatively and stylistically. The same spiritual awareness is there too I hope in our interpretations of Britten’s realisations of Bach and our chosen folksongs along with Ades and Tippet’s Purcell realisations.

I have always loved the sound of Bach on the piano. Maybe it was growing up with Richter playing his preludes and fugues on our record player at home that planted the seed. And somehow this has become another nostalgic echo, a source of great comfort.

Deborah Pritchard has taken Echo as a concept and experimented with the resonance of the piano, and Errollyn Wallen’s song conjures such peace as does the Bach. Her musical influences are boundless much like all the composers in this programme.

End of My Days (with Manchester Collective)

The inspiration for this album came about from my first collaboration with the Manchester Collective in the spring of 2020. The Collecitve’s co founder Rakhi Singh and I were at school together and have been great friends for more than 25 years. She is an extraordinarily gifted musician and collaborator. The way she communicates with her group, bringing so much joy to fellow musicians and audiences alike, is truly ineffable.

Collaborating with her and this group has felt like a fortuitous extension of our friendship. Rakhi and co founder Adam Szabo’s passion for enriching the musical landscape through diverse, imaginative and inclusive curation has been a source of ongoing inspiration for so many.

During the first Covid lockdown, we programmed the music which appears on this recording for the purpose of touring the UK, selecting repertoire which we hoped would resonate with, and uplift our audiences. It was a time when we were all being confronted by challenging notions of mortality and isolation in new ways. A sense of vulnerability was palpable within our communities, as people grappled with heightened levels of uncertainty. It felt as if our way of life had been thrown into flux. As artists committed to serving our audiences, we felt compelled to ask ourselves the question, ‘what music might attend to the prevailing concerns of this time?’. Our answer came in the form of this offering.

Music always holds the potential to speak to us, to comfort us and help us to feel understood, especially in such challenging times. We identify with the poet who has miraculously found the words to describe the indescribable and the composer who conveys expression into sound.

The title of this album ‘End of my Days’ comes from Errollyn Wallen’s song; a resounding celebration of life. It’s full of energy and embraces death without regret or sadness but with great verve and acceptance, much like Ravels Kaddish.

In Tavener’s transcendental songs, the poet Anna Akhmatova pays homage to two beloved poets whose voices as published writers were silenced in their respective countries. In two Dowland laments we experience love, loss and separation so directly. The sense of solitude is palpable. In Debussy’s songs we are transported back to the discovery of youth and erotic love in all its vulnerability and excitement. Here nature is entwined in the human experience, much like the first two songs on the disc ‘meet me in the green glen’ and ‘Along the Field’, which look back at life, possibly even after death, remembering love awakening.

In Mahler’s ‘Urlicht’we are bathed in primordial light with the message that we will return from where we came from and light shall lift us into eternity. And finally Deborah Pritchard’s ‘Peace’ is a message of hope, welcomely received as the world emerged out of lockdown in 2021. As with Mahler, luminous tranquility moves us into the light, towards eternity.

Heroines of Love and Loss (with Mime Brinkmann and Jonas Nordberg)

"Ruby Hughes’s soprano has an effortless beauty: pliant, subtly expressive, never forced. She captures the chaste fervour of the sacred works…Brinkmann and Nordberg proffer aptly spontaneous continuo realisations, varying timbre and texture and adding discreet embellishments according to the poetic moment.” – BBC Music Magazine

Introduction by Ruby Hughes:

'Love and Loss' in various manifestations plays the principle role in this trio recital program. The
music of the 16th and 17th centuries has always fascinated me, especially in its intimate and
revealing chamber music. The universal themes of love and loss were often at the heart of the
composer’s message, which would be at times earthbound, tragic and full of woe, or overflowing
with elation and an otherworldly sense of the spiritual.

Jonas Nordberg and I have collaborated and performed regularly as a duo partnership in recital and recordings throughout Sweden, the UK and Europe. Our project ‘Heroines of love and loss’ is a celebration of female Italian composers and classical Heroines, mostly of the 17th century. It was premiered in Stockholm Kulturhuset together with the renowned Kenneth Kvanstrom Dance Company. Further performances of variations on this program have included the Lockenhaus International Festival in Austria (broadcast for EUB and ORF), at Change Music festival in Kungsbacka (broadcast for P2), and for the Försaparkett concert series in Stockholm.

Throughout this program and on our recording for BIS Jonas Nordberg and Mime Brinkmann play multidimensional roles, sometimes as soloist, sometimes supporting the voice in playful counterpoint. This trio of plucked and bowed instruments with voice is one of the richest, most dramatic and expressive of musical combinations. 

In this repertoire we are often experimenting with sound and colour in relation to the words, and are astonished to always discover an abundance of possibilities within the dynamics of the trio. Scores in the 16th and 17th century were often not fully realised and this allows us ample room for
improvisation and spontaneity.
The music we researched and eventually chose spans the late 16th and the 17th century, beginning with Caccini, Sessa and Bennett who form the bridge between the late renaissance and early baroque. We also have a much earlier lament attributed to Ann Boleyn as well as the anonymous ‘Willow song’ with no exact date confirmed.

Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi, were true musical pioneers as composers and performers and wrote magnificent music for the voice. Very little music remains of the Benedictine nuns Lucrezia Vizzana and Claudia Sessa but in these rare examples we hear their natural affinity for writing deeply moving and spiritual music.

We were inspired to perform and record these rarely heard Italian gems together with 17th century songs and laments of celebrated classical heroines. Our aim in making this selection is to cast a spotlight on our favourite female composers by putting them together with already celebrated classical heroines of that time. It would be wonderful to see these brave female pioneers brought out of relative obscurity and placed alongside the more celebrated composers in recital.

Homecoming (with Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins)

Introduction by Ruby Hughes:

Our Homecoming programme grew from discussions with Tamsin Waley Cohen and Huw Watkins around the idea of Home - What does home mean? Where does a feeling of home come from? Why does it matter?

Like so many essential elements of life, while home may be a universal concept, it is paradoxically surely different for every one of us too. Through the music we have chosen for this programme, we have tried to incorporate ideas of our own cultural identities, displacement, nostalgia, the courage to build a new home, and the question of whether home comes from within us, those around us, or is rooted in a sense of belonging to a particular land. As we live through the biggest global refugee crisis in history, this painful reality cannot be ignored when we explore the idea of Home.

Deborah Pritchard’s new work “Liberty” explores ideas of hope and freedom as essential to creating a sense of home from within, and the deep spirituality of her work emphasises these essential human rights. Woven throughout the programme are references to ancient folk songs, grounding us to generation past, present, and future, as well as music which gives us personally a sense of nurturing homeliness.

Inheriting the Earth (with United Strings of Europe)

Introduction by Ruby Hughes:

Now more than ever feels like a time to reflect on nature, landscape and Earth. 

What is our place in it? What does it mean to be custodians of this vast planet? And how have composers and songwriters through the ages drawn on nature to ignite their imagination and create music?
Nature and creativity are inseparable. One cannot survive without the other. Ruby Hughes and the United Strings of Europe present Inheriting the Earth – arrangements and commissions of 20th and 21st Century works by women composers that celebrate natural beauty and explore our role in safeguarding it. The programme includes music by living British composers: first recordings of songs by Welsh composer Rhian Samuel, commissions from Ivor Academy-winner Joanna Marsh and Deborah Pritchard, poetry contributions by renowned human rights Lawyer David Neita and new arrangements of songs by Errollyn Wallen.

Expanding the repertoire for voice and string orchestra, the project seeks to engage audiences with the challenges of preserving, nurturing and staying wholly connected to our natural world. Look at the instruments that grace the stage.

No-one can pretend that music has answers to the great loss of biodiversity we’re witnessing, nor does it have the ability to solve climate change. But music can provide a space to re connect with our love of the natural world in our imaginations, allowing tempers to ease, minds to calm, thinking to resume and optimism to flourish.

Kindred Spirits (with Errollyn Wallen)

Soprano Ruby Hughes and composer-pianist Errollyn Wallen CBE, recently appointed Master of the King’s Music, join forces for an inspiring and intimate recital that blurs boundaries between classical, folk, and jazz.

This remarkable collaboration grew out of Ruby’s deep admiration for Wallen’s song writing; music that she describes as “exquisite, deeply felt, playful, and full of contrast.” Their friendship, born in Greenwich, has evolved into a musical dialogue of rare chemistry and insight: the composer at the piano, the singer who has lived inside her songs for a decade.

Together, they invite audiences into a world where emotion and imagination meet, weaving a programme that resonates across time and genre, including songs from Errollyn’s celebrated collections, Britten’s crystalline folk song arrangements and Charles Ives’ lyrical and harmonically daring explorations of the American spirit.

The result is a unique concert experience; elegant yet raw, refined yet spontaneous, reflecting the creative kinship of three composers who dared to redefine musical boundaries.

Following acclaimed performances at London’s Wigmore Hall and St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney, Hughes and Wallen are now bringing this extraordinary recital to audiences across the UK and internationally.

Songs of Farewell (with Julius Drake)

Following the critical success of her most recent recording for the BIS label titled Echo, internationally acclaimed soprano Ruby Hughes joins forces with master pianist Julius Drake, bringing their deeply personal and powerful recital program Songs of Farewell to international stages.

This concert offering is a richly curated exploration of parting, loss, and transformation - not as a singular moment, but as an evolving emotional landscape: sometimes mournful, sometimes radiant, and even seductive.

With a long and celebrated partnership that includes performances at Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall, and the Louvre, Hughes and Drake offer a unique synergy that brings these works vividly to life in performance.

At the heart of Songs of Farewell is an inspired juxtaposition of repertoire across time and language. Masterworks by Schubert and Schumann are placed alongside 20th- and 21stcentury voices such as Faure, Debussy, Britten, Ives and George Crumb, and include an exciting new commission by composer and Master of the King’s music Errollyn Wallen CBE.

Highlights include Crumb’s hypnotic Come Lovely and Soothing Death, Britten’s poignant Since She Whom I Loved and a world of poetic introspection from Schumann’s Nachtlied to Wallen’s bold new song settings.

This is a concert experience that resonates with today’s audiences: a meditation on what it means to say goodbye - to people, to places, to eras - and how song can hold all the complexity of those emotions.

The Dawn of Time (with Joseph Middleton)

Introduction by Ruby Hughes:

'Nature never did betray the heart that loved her'

Kunal and I met through the BBC New Generation Scheme. From our very first performance together we felt an immediate kinship and deep connection on stage. There was something powerful and inspiring watching and listening to Kunal play, and his emotional commitment to the music was something I really
identified with.

We were keen to explore more repertoire together and curate a program celebrating Nature and Mother Earth. The music we have chosen for The Dawn of Time focusses on the natural world and our surroundings and its impact on words and music throughout the ages. It is about how the world has shaped memory and identity.

The BBC commissioned a song cycle by Lyra Pramuk called Tinnitus, a contemporary exploration of a winters journey in Berlin with texts by Nat Marcus. Mahler, Berg and Schumann have a particularly profound way of relating to nature and conjuring magical atmospheres through their music.

We have, of course, included some of our favourite Celtic folk songs, songs by Ives, George Crumb and Benjamin Britten provide examples of some of the most profound music in the English language.

Tre Voci (with Natalie Clein and Julius Drake)

Introduction by Ruby Hughes:

Julius Drake has always been a huge inspiration to myself and Natalie Clein growing up and it was such an exciting endeavour to form a trio together.

I have always been particularly drawn to the combination of voice and cello and wanted to explore performing both original material and arranging and reworking chamber repertoire for this unique formation.

We have been extremely lucky to have commissioned major works by Judith Weir and Deborah Pritchard and have built a large repertoire from over 10 years working together.

We particularly enjoy curating themed programs with promoters, performing as a trio and also combining voice and cello in duo, cello and piano, and solo instruments/voice.