musician, painter.
A highly-experienced performance artist and multi-instrumentalist, she has taken part in numerous concerts and recordings as a kanun player and a percussionist.
She studied the kanun in Istanbul, with the renowned musician and teacher, Halil Karaduman. She holds a degree in Byzantine Music, and also obtained a National Diploma in Music Technology from Oldham College, Manchester UK, in 2009.
Over the past twenty years she has performed in festivals in Europe and around the world, with world-renowned musicians such as: Ross Daly, Psarantonis, Ziad Rajab, Selim Sesler, Goksel Baktagir, Nedim Nalbandoglou, amongst others. Since 2004, she has also been performing, in concerts and recordings, in duet with the cellist and lyra player, Yiorgos Kaloudis.
She has performed at venues like: the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Cemal Resit Rey Conser Salonu, in Istanbul, the Town Hall in Melbourne, Australia, the Manchester Jazz Festival in Manchester, UK, the Womad Festival in Athens, Greece and has taken part in recitals in both the Anglican Church and the National Theatre, in Athens, Greece.
In her teens, she was trained as a Byzantine icon painter and worked with the renowned icon painter Dimitris Kendakas on commissions in various churches in Kalamata, Greece. Her portfolio includes icons painted for private collections and also for churches and monasteries in Greece and Mt. Sinai, Egypt. She spent several years in Istanbul (2000-2007), working with a team of restorers from "Restaurateurs sans Frontieres" (Restorers without Borders -- RSF), retouching Byzantine icons and paintings in the Sakip Sabanci Museum, by such artists as Zonaro and Osman Hamdi, amongst others. Inspired, during her stay in the city, by its changeless beauty, she added photography to her expressive range and, through her feeling for light and colour, looking through the lens with the aesthetic appreciation of the painter, she completed her first photographic venture, 'Istanbul'.
Her discography contains such CD’s as: ’At the Café Aman', with Ross Daly, Niki Tramba & Labyrinth; 'Mawget Tarab', with Ziad Rajab, 'Furtuna', with Goksel Baktagir and Nedim Nalbantoglou, 'Girls, Ghosts and Gods', with Lefteris Mountzis, 'Limani, and ‘Lavra’ with Laura Shannon, “Crossroads” documentary by Fatih Akin, and 'Truth' and 'On the Wind', with Yiorgos Kaloudis.
She is a member of the orchestra Kölner Chor für Türkische music and the groups ‘Chosen' and 'Furtuna', and has collaborated with Steve Tavaglione and Sylvan Richardson. She also works closely with the celebrated Greek actress and interpreter of ancient drama, Sophia Hill, as well as with the “dance and movement therapist”, Laura Shannon.
www.ruth-hill-art.com