CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Nancy Ruth
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City/Place:
Málaga
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Country:
Spain
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Hometown:
Victoria, British Columbia
Life & Work
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Bio:
Nancy Ruth is a Canadian-born singer, songwriter, composer, and recording artist. A world traveller with a powerful stage presence, she comes alive as she cooks up a tasty brew with her jazz, latin, and flamenco influences. Her Spanish roots eventually led her to Málaga, Spain, where she spends part of the year composing new works.
An early love of jazz was ignited by family jam sessions while growing up in British Columbia, Canada. She went on to study music at the Royal Conservatory of Music, Douglas College, and Berklee College of Music, as well as acting and theatre at Langara’s Studio 58.
She started her professional career singing in bands booked by the Feldman Agency, touring Canada with Axess, Renaissance, and Aces High. She released her first self-penned album Nancy Ruth, in 1998. She fronted jazz trios in clubs and festivals, including the DuMaurier International Jazz Festival in Canada, then toured throughout the world as a pianist/vocalist, including a long run as featured performer in Disney's Sessions Jazz Club. In 2004 she released an album of jazz standards called It’s Got To Be Love. A foray into musical theatre led to six seasons of starring in the Klondike show Beaver Creek Rendezvous. She was a guest vocalist with WEA recording artists The Lovehunters in Singapore, and when invited to perform for the Sultan of Brunei, she learned to sing in Malay and Indonesian during her month-long gig at the Royal Palace.
Always combining a love of travel and adventure with her musical career, she has enjoyed collaborations with Arabic and Berber musicians in Morocco, Flamencos in Andalusia, and Polynesians in the South Pacific. She's also appeared as a guest artist on albums by Canadian trumpeter Gabriel Mark Hasselbach, and New York composer Joe Gianono.
A performance with Panamanian composer Toño Robira incited encouragement for her to sing the boleros and ballads of Latin America. She subsequently recorded one of his compositions and co-wrote several songs in Spanish for the 2008 Home of Jazz release Me Quedo. Returning to Spain, she wrote and recorded the album Para Ti in both English and Spanish (originally on the Spectra Jazz label), then produced and starred in the show Trío Pasión, an homage to the music of Spain and Latin America which has toured theatres world-wide.
Her fifth album Sangria Jam is a musical journey recounting her travels and life in Spain. Combining her influences of jazz, latin and flamenco into her songwriting, she says: “I write what flows freely… I’m not trying to create a fusion, I just play what I feel. I’m a product of my experience and surroundings”.
In 2018 Nancy Ruth released the single/ video Todo Para Ti which has been featured on radio and television in the U.S.
2019 brought Nancy to New York City to record new works, including a soundtrack piece which features members of the New York Philharmonic, arranger Joe Gianono (Blood Sweat and Tears, Michel Camilo) and Grammy award winning engineer Oscar Zambrano. She was a featured composer/ artist at Africa's biggest jazz festival, Festival du Saint Louis, Senegal.
Recently she wrote and directed a documentary about cross-cultural collaboration, filmed over many years in Morocco. 'Nancy Ruth's Musical Adventures in Morocco' is now making the festival circuit.
In 2020 she released 4 self-penned singles: Breathing in Indigo, her Moroccan collaboration Just Can't Let It Go - Extended Mix in Morocco, Where the Sea Melts to Sky, an orchestral soundtrack piece featuring members of the New York Philharmonic, and Turn the Lights Back Down, a sultry jazz ballad.
Nancy Ruth is currently (2021) in Málaga, Spain, writing and recording in her home studio on the Mediterranean.
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"Not only does she sing ... she writes all of the songs as well as plays piano …both accessible and hip..."
-George W. Harris, Jazz Weekly
"Nancy Ruth, a powerful and talented singer, combines together jazz, flamenco and Latin rhythms in a natural way, creating a fresh genre that fits into all three idioms."
-Scott Yanow, L.A. Jazz Scene
"Nancy gave a delightful and very natural performance, and charmed the audience with her talent, authenticity and sincerity. It was amazing to discover that Nancy had written the music herself; I don’t think anyone was expecting that."
-Diana Allen, Jazz Australia
"She seems to be sucking the marrow out of life, making each song into a celebration of being and of passionately embracing the whole range of human emotions and experience."
-Nikos Fotakis, Australian Jazz
"Sangria Jam not only designs Ms. Ruth as a global storyteller, but also an innovative jazz pedagogue."
-Karl Stober, Cadence Jazz Magazine
"Canadian born Nancy Ruth has a voice like liquid silk and a powerful stage presence that enchants her audience. She now lives in Malaga, Spain and travels the world singing and playing her own music, a scintillating mix of Flamenco and Latin, spiced with her love of Jazz."
-Nikki Fort, The Clothesline - Digital Arts Magazine Australia
"An incredible voice that unravels with elegance and fluidity between jazz and flamenco"
-Déjame Soñar, Granada, Spain
"Nancy Ruth’s Sangria Jam sounds like the sun… absolutely gorgeous voice along with great production and fantastic arrangements."
-Vladimir Oreščanin, Get on the Stage Music Magazine, Serbia
"The music of Nancy Ruth has been a great discovery for me, as I was captivated by her extraordinary fusion of flamenco and jazz."
– Pedro Sánchez Pérez; Radio Esquina, Sanlúcar Spain
"This is music with depth, passion, subtlety, and a distinct European sensibility."
– Rick Gibbs, Island Jazz
"The blood boils a little hotter, the movements become more fluid, and the passion is exhumed much deeper from within the soul. This is the encounter one will feel with vocalist Nancy Ruth. Her tones allow the heartbeat to race faster with every pulse of the composition. Her music instills that vibrant tone with a sultry execution."
– Ejazz News
Clips (more may be added)
Uncoiling from an Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix...
EX TERRA BRASILIS
Millions of short-path connections unite creators worldwide by means of the extraordinary mathematics of:
The Small World Phenomenon
—The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Take an artist... from Salvador, Havana, Brooklyn, Cape Town...
Writer, musician, filmmaker, painter, choreographer, architect, academic, fashion designer, chef...
Integrate this artist into a network of other artists around the world.
Our artist tends to within close proximity of all others in the network, in the identical manner in which most human beings are within some six degrees of most others.
The creative universe becomes a creative village in which all have access to all.
Inspired in the sensorial immanence of Borges' transfinites-inspired Alephs.
The Aleph / O Aleph
O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space...
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.com
Linking to the Matrix from your media (to the Matrix in general / to your Matrix Page from your Instagram) plugs your people in.
https://linktr.ee
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; recorded "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): World's premier klezmer violinist
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
Conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
Sodré
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Thus A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until Sodré was silenced, threatened with death and forced into exile...
And thus a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (seat of the Integrated Global Creative Economy* and where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
*Darius Mans holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, and lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador da Bahia.
Between 2000 and 2004 he served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola. In that capacity, Darius led a team which generated $150 million in annual lending to Mozambique, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment.
Darius was an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he worked closely with the U.S. Treasury and the IMF to establish a framework to avoid debt repudiation and to restructure private commercial debt in Brazil and Chile.
He taught Economics at the University of Maryland and was a consultant to KPMG on infrastructure projects in Latin America.
Replete with Brazilian greatness, but we listened to Miles Davis and Jimmy Cliff in there too; visitors are David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
Susan Rogers
Alicia Svigals
Julian Lloyd Webber
Kamasi Washington
Clarice Assad
Randy Brecker
Herbie Hancock...
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
Darius Mans
Sparrow/Pardal Roberts
RÁDIO MATRIX