Ruth Cunningham

Ruth Cunningham is a classically trained musician and a sound healing practitioner. She combines these skills to improvise music that connects people to the healing and spiritual power of music. She specializes in improvisational sacred music from varied spiritual traditions in both in liturgical and concert settings. Her new solo program Light and Shadow encompasses a mixture music including several traditional chants from Western and Eastern traditions as well as Ruth’s own compositions and improvisations. The texts include Medieval Latin Marian texts, Sanskrit texts, prayers, and poems by Ruth’s sister Elizabeth Cunningham. She accompanies herself on Medieval harp, Renaissance flute and recorder, piano and shruti box. Ruth was a member of the acclaimed women’s vocal quartet Anonymous 4 for ten years. With them, she performed in concerts and festivals throughout the United States, Europe and the Far East and made ten recordings, nine of medieval chant and polyphony for harmonia mundi and one, Voices of Light by contemporary composer Richard Einhorn, for Sony Classical. Ruth is rejoining Anonymous 4 for the 2007-2008 season replacing one of the members who is not available.

Ruth’s most recent CD releases are Harpmodes: Journey for Voice and Harp and Light and Shadow: Chants, Prayers and Improvisations. In 2005 she released HARC: Inside Chants, a recording of multi-faith chants with Ana Hernandez. Among her other recordings are Sacred Light with harpist Diana Stork on the At Peace Music label and Ancient Beginnings which is part of the Open Ear Center’s music for healing series. She is featured on Invoking the Muse a CD with Frame Drummer Layne Redmond released on the SoundsTrue label. She is part of the women’s ensemble of Early Music NY and participated in their CD Music of Medieval Love. She has also performed and recorded with the Renaissance vocal ensemble Pomerium. She is a regular member of the professional choir at St Mary the Virgin.

Photography: Christian Steiner

As a sound healing practitioner Ruth works with individuals and groups on using the voice and music as tools for healing and transformation. She collaborates with other healers and musicians in a variety of settings. Ruth plays regularly and teaches a sound healing class for the Integrative Stress Management Program at St Vincent’s Hospital in New York City. In 2001-2002 she was among the musicians who offered their services at St. Paul’s Chapel, which served as a refuge for the workers at Ground Zero.

Ruth received a B. Mus. in Performance of Early Music from the New England Conservatory of Music and taught recorder and renaissance flute at the Amherst Early Music Workshops for sixteen years. She is certified as a cross cultural music healing practitioner (CCMHP) by the Open Ear Center where she studied with Pat Moffitt Cook.

“Ms. Cunningham stayed true to Anonymous 4’s roots with ‘Light and Shadow,’ a program at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields that showed that she still has Gregorian chant in her blood.”