Ruby

After appearing on a quartet of very different BIS releases, ranging from early baroque arias to orchestral songs by Alban Berg and Mahler’s ‘Resurrection Symphony’, the British soprano Ruby Hughes has devised a song recital, together with her regular Lieder partner Joseph Middleton. The process began in 2018 when the two gave the world première of Helen Grime’s Bright Travellers, a set of five poems charting the interior and exterior worlds of pregnancy and motherhood. Ruby Hughes soon set about planning a programme which would converge with Grime’s music and the themes of new life and of love in all its aspects.

For the fourth of five recordings made by the classic Ruby Braff-George Barnes Quartet, ten songs by Rodgers and Hart are given melodic, swinging, creative treatment. Cornetist Braff and guitarist Barnes fed off of each other and worked very well together, while rhythm guitarist Wayne Wright and bassist Michael Moore always gave them impeccable support. Highlights of this enjoyable set include "Isn't It Romantic," "Blue Room," "You Took Advantage of Me" and "The Lady Is a Tramp".

As a young composer, Edward Nesbit was drawn to the rich complexities of contemporary instrumental music; little more than a decade later, he has found himself returning to the inheritance of his early youth as a chorister: the texts of mass, psalms and canticles, and the long centuries of the Anglican choral tradition. Not that there is anything traditional about Nesbit’s music, which synthesises these two heritages into a soundworld that is accessible, full of references yet always recognisably its own voice.

The inspiration for this album came about from Ruby Hughes’ first collaboration with the Manchester Collective in the spring of 2020. During the first Covid lockdown, they built the programme of this recital for the purpose of touring the UK and uplifting their audiences at a time when we were all being confronted by challenging notions of mortality and isolation. As artists, they asked themselves what music might attend to the prevailing concerns of this time. Their answers came in the form of this offering. The title of this album, End of My Days, comes from Errollyn Wallen’s song; a resounding celebration of life that embraces death without regret or sadness but with great verve and acceptance. The other songs, each in its own way, evoke silence and separation, but also love and hope and even the reassurance that we will return whence we came and light shall lift us into eternity. The concluding song, Deborah Pritchard’s Peace, is a message of hope, willingly received as the world emerged out of lockdown in 2021. Luminous tranquillity moves us into the light, towards eternity.

Singer Ruby Starr was best-known as a backup singer for '70s macho man rockers Black Oak Arkansas, but also issued several recordings as a solo artist as well. Born Constance Henrietta Mierzwiak in Toledo, OH, in 1949, the future rock singer got her start at the age of nine (performing renditions of Brenda Lee songs) before changing her stage name to Connie Little and forming the Phil Spector-esque Connie & the Blu-Beats. Following stints in such obscure outfits as the Downtowners and the Blue Grange Ramblers (aka BGR), the latter of which mutated into the outfit Ruby Jones (a name that the singer was going by at the time). Signed to Curtis Mayfield's Curtom label, the recording of Ruby Jones' 1971 self-titled was even supervised by Mayfield…

After appearing on a quartet of very different BIS releases, ranging from early baroque arias to orchestral songs by Alban Berg and Mahler’s ‘Resurrection Symphony’, the British soprano Ruby Hughes has devised a song recital, together with her regular Lieder partner Joseph Middleton. The process began in 2018 when the two gave the world première of Helen Grime’s Bright Travellers, a set of five poems charting the interior and exterior worlds of pregnancy and motherhood. Ruby Hughes soon set about planning a programme which would converge with Grime’s music and the themes of new life and of love in all its aspects.

Ruby Braff & Dick Hyman - America, The Beautiful (1982) {Arbors ARCD 19269 rel 2002}
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© 1982, 2002 Arbors Records | ARCD 19269
Jazz / Mainstream Jazz / Cornet / Wurlitzer Theatre Organ

Ruby is one of those few people who could solo with a pipe organ, who could improvise with such an unusual instrumental background. It requires a very special ability - flexibility, ingenuity, and invention. Ruby, of course, is his own man. Like his idol, Louis Armstrong, he commands the center of attention, even if the background is something as odd as a theatre organ. The tonal colors of a pipe organ are its great glory. Above all, I'm stimulated by being able to orchestrate on the spot. And once you launch into a bright swinging tempo with the instrument sounding perhaps a beat behind the fingers, the sensation is like leading a herd of galloping elephants. You don't dare look back.