Bruce Ruddell

Associate Composer-Canadian Music Centre

The Canadian League of Composers

Canadian Aboriginal Music Award-Toronto-2008

“You have just heard a masterpiece“- Gerard Schwarz- The Seattle Symphony

“Ruddell’s music is awesome…beautiful..exquisite, Ruddell writes gloriously for the voice…orchestrations as lush as Bruckner…the Death movement had the somber radiance of a Bach motet.”– The Vancouver Sun

“Ruddell’s music is uplifting…exhilarating… hypnotic… propulsive… sublime. moments of pure divinity…full of colour and variety…rhythmic surges that Frank Zappa or Igor Stravinsky would have been happy to claim…a breakout hit.”– The Georgia Strait

Hello! Thank you for landing on my site. Here’s what I am up to right now.

I have just completed a commission for Seattle’s Interlake Wind Ensemble. The piece is titled: Strength From Rivers. The work is inspired by a dawn walk along an ancient wilderness river trail on Vancouver Island. The piece will premiere in Seattle in January 2024.

A film documenting the creation of my symphony for Lushootseed Elder Vi Hilbert and The Seattle Symphony continues to be screened in Washington State. I travel to N.Y. in early December to plan for the performance of the symphony titled: The Healing Heart Of The First People Of This Land and presentation of the film in the new Perelman Centre For The Arts in 2025.

The Five Seasons is a full-length multi-disciplinary work for eight singers, ten instrumentalists, dancers, and multi-media.  I have been writing this work for several years and now, after a COVID intervention that saw the Vancouver Chan Centre world premiere canceled in March 2020.  The premier is planned for Victoria, BC in the Spring of 2025. 

The Five Seasons is made possible by a generous gift from Haida artist, poet, singer, and dancer, Robert Davidson, and an equally generous grant from the Music Division of the Canada Council.

The Plague Diaries is a new music/theatre (lyric drama) creation funded by the Music Division of  The Canada Council. The work is inspired by Shakespeare’s isolation periods in London during the plague outbreaks and the political and social upheavals of the late 1500,s in London, England: “The plague was caused by sin and sin is caused by plays.”

A grand adventure!

Thanks for the visit. Much appreciated.

Bruce

If you would like to contact me, here’s my email address:

bruceruddell123@gmail.com

Image and photo of The Raven screen by Gwaai Edenshaw. It is the front screen for my music theatre piece Beyond Eden. Red carpet photo by Melissa Ponder, Seattle.