Graham Fitkin & Ruth Wall
Biographie Graham Fitkin & Ruth Wall
Ruth Wall
performs on concert and lever harps, buzzing Renaissance bray harp and Gaelic wire strung harp. She is passionate about new music and performs with groups such as BBC Concert Orchestra, Goldfrapp, Kathryn Tickell, Sacconi Quartet and London Chamber Orchestra. Ruth has performed at venues including Berlin Philharmonic, Eden Project, Sydney Opera House, Spiral Hall Tokyo, Tate Gallery and Glastonbury as well as recording at studios including Air Lyndhurst, Abbey Road and Maida Vale.
She has worked with composers such as Peter Maxwell Davies, Howard Skempton, Gavin Bryars, and Laurence Crane, building up a repertoire of new works for the harp, leading to her first solo album ‘The Uncommon Harp’. Ruth also collaborates with her partner, composer Graham Fitkin as FitkinWall. Their first album ‘Kaplan’ for two synthesizers is based on the fictitious character in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and toured Japan and UK. In 2007 ‘Still Warm’ juxtaposed Ruth’s early harps with new electronics and live visuals, and in 2015 they released and toured their latest album ‘Lost’ for Gaelic wire harp, concert harp and Moog. Working with Graham’s 9 piece band Fitkin, she appeared on stage at the Royal Opera House, for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and on the 2016 albums ‘Vamp’ and ‘Veneer’. In 2022 she will join The Fairly Relentless Piano Quartet.
Ruth has worked with Will Gregory and Portishead’s Adrian Utley in a new soundtrack to accompany Carl Dreyer’s classic 1928 film ‘Joan of Arc’. She is also a member of the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble. She recorded and toured worldwide with Goldfrapp on ‘Seventh Tree’ and has recorded with artists including French singer Nolwenn Leroy, saxophonist Simon Haram, bassist Charlie Jones, and trumpeter Noel Langley.
Since 2000 Ruth has performed in galleries including Tate St Ives and Barbara Hepworth Gallery alongside work by artists including Brian Wynter and James Hugonin, as well as collaborating with Alessandra Ausenda on a sound installation involving a giant rotating dress.
She toured extensively with the acclaimed aerial theatre company Ockham’s Razor and joined Kneehigh Theatre in 2017 in their production of ‘The Tin Drum’.
In 2019 Ruth performed concerts at the Australian Chamber Music Festival curated by Kathryn Stott with Goldner Quartet, Lotte Betts Dean and Chinese pipa player Wu Man. She will tour her new show Harpland with Graham Fitkin and collaborate with singer Rui Fu and band in 2022-3.
Radio and TV appearances include BBC Radio 3 Late Junction Sessions and In Tune, Radio 4 and Jools Holland. She features in ‘Loving Vincent’, Ben Wheatley’s ‘Sightseers’, Jocelyn Pook’s Drawing Life and John Lunn’s soundtrack for the BBC series ‘The White Queen’.
Ruth has recorded for EMI, Mercury Music, Sony BMG, GFR, Bedroom Community and Universal.
Graham Fitkin
I compose for live performance, for recordings, dance, media and installations. I work with acoustic instruments, electronic instruments and audio recordings. Here is a selection of the type of work I do.
Orchestral – previously Composer-in-Residence with Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orch, Composer-in-Residence with London Chamber Orch. Commissions from the Halle, BBC Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony Orch, RSNO, Athens Camerata, BBC Symphony Orch, BBC Concert Orch.
Chamber – collaborations include those with Yo-Yo Ma, The Sacconi Quartet, Kathryn Stott, Nederlands Blazersensemble, Powerplant, Will Gregory, Ensemble Bash, Piano Circus, Simon Haram
Cross-Art – projects include those with Tate St Ives, Minack Theatre, a VR collaboration with Shezad Dawood, the Geography music app for HFC and the tree-planting Birch 2020 project.
Dance – collaborations with Shobana Jeyasingh, Wayne McGregor’s Random Dance, Pacific Northwest Ballet, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Bi-Ma, Sidonie Rochon, Munich Ballet, Portugal National Ballet
Education/Community – includes 3 UK PRS Composer residencies, 9 regional community projects, university seminars, masterclasses and directed workshops in UK, Japan, Italy and Soweto
Performer – directs Fitkin Band 9-piece group and works with harpist Ruth Wall as FitkinWall.
Selected UK – Cello Concerto for Yo-Yo Ma at BBC Proms, Mindset for the Royal Ballet, The Athlon for LCO at Cultural Olympiad, Home for Royal Opera House (with Jasmin Vardimon), Lost for aerial theatre company Ockham’s Razor, Recorder Concerto for Sophie Westbrooke and BBC National Orch of Wales, Twenty-Six Days for Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Wing for Royal Aeronautical Society
Selected non-UK – Partially Screaming for Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon, Birch 1871 for orchestra to celebrate 2014 European City of Culture, Umea in Sweden, People for Les Elements in Toulouse, Tracking Yesterday’s England for Calefax, Amsterdam, Circuit for Kathy Stott and Noriko Ogawa and Tokyo Symphony Orch, Huoah for New York City Ballet
Prizes – three BASCA Composer Awards, International Grand Prix Dance Music Award 2000, Royal Philharmonic Society Composer Award 2015
