CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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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
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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)
The Bahian Recôncavo was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind’s existence on this planet.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil’s national music — the pandeiro — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil’s culturally fecund nordeste/northeast (where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa — Lagoon of the Canoe — and raised in Olho d’Águia — Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil’s aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
"Great culture is great power. And in a small world great things are possible."
The Matrix was built to open the world to Bahian musicians by opening the world to all creators.
In the Matrix you curate people (and entities) for what they do and where they do it. And they can curate you. A network is formed.
By the mathematical magic of the small-world phenomenon, everybody in the Matrix (as in human society) tends to within degrees of everybody else.
And by logical extension, the entire planet. All can (potentially) be found by everybody. QED
Recently accessed from:
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"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; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"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...)
"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
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Ground Zero for the project was the culture born in Brazil's quilombos (in Angola a kilombo is a village; in Brazil it is a village either founded by Africans or Afro-Brazilians who had escaped slavery, or — as in the case of São Francisco do Paraguaçu below — occupied by such after abandonment by the ruling class):
...theme for a Brazilian Matrix, from an Afro-Brazilian Mass by
Milton Nascimento
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
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.
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Hermeto Pascoal
Alicia Svigals
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX