Ruth was brought up in the Scottish Highlands, studied at the Welsh College of Music and Drama and gained an MMus at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
She has won several prizes including the John Ireland Prize and the Laurence Davies Memorial Award, and now performs as a soloist and in chamber ensembles. Recent performances include those at Aula Magna in Rome, the Bath International Festival, the Eden Project, Cutting Edge in London and Spiral Hall Tokyo.
Over the last few years she has been working alongside several celebrated British composers such as Howard Skempton, Laurence Crane, Gabriel Jackson and Peter Maxwell Davies, building up a repertoire of new works for the lever harp. Her first solo album The Uncommon Harp was released in December 2004.
Ruth composes and performs her own works on harp - recent broadcasts include Radio 3 commission Packet of Seeds, Radio 4 Classic Serial - All Things Betray Thee and the BBC 2 series The History of Britain. She has worked with award winning director Cal McCrystal and in 2003 wrote the music for a new film The Freak which won Best Silent Film prize in the First Light Film awards. Away from the harp she has composed for the BBC Singers, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Cheltenham and Spitalfields Festivals and worked as a presenter on BBC Radio 3. She also performs on piano with her partner Graham Fitkin, most recently on Kaplan - a live performance project involving sampling keyboards and film.
Her education work includes creative projects in East London’s Docklands, The Tate project As Dark as Light and colleges in Aberdeen as well as lecturing in harp repertoire and techniques at Bristol University. In 2005 Ruth worked with dance Company C-Scape and film maker Barbara Santi. In 2006 the new album Still Warm is being released and toured, and Ruth will begin a collaboration with sculptor Alessandra Ausenda.
