¡Revolución! Review-Electroacoustic music from Fulcrum Point/Latino Music Festival-Fulcrum Point New Music Project-October 28, 2018
Debra Davy-Splash Magazine
Arturo Fuentes-Plexus (2009)
this extraordinary work, performed with blinding skill by Jeremy Ruthrauff on saxophone...The presentation was a tour de force.
A performance of an original solo composition Gifts to Make Children of the Seers led Chicago Reader critic John Corbett to write:
…a recent solo slot on a mixed bill totally turned me on my ear. Ruthrauff’s control of the horn, particularly the full range of harmonics, was uncanny; he played blocks of multiphonics effortlessly, creating the illusion of multiple lines moving through chords, a full-fledged pseudopolyphony. And he did this with enough warmth to keep from turning into a nerdy technician…
Ear Taxi Festival shows what collaboration can mean for new music in Chicago by Johon von Rhein, Chicago Tribune October 11, 2016. Review of Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Music Now Contemporary Music series season opener (and conclusion of the Chicago Ear Taxi contemporary music festival)
What a joyride the Ear Taxi Festival has been!
...Monday's MusicNOW concert by CSO musicians and guests at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance — an event marking both the finale of Ear Taxi and the season opener of the CSO's new music series ... There were two world premieres and two Chicago premieres. Pieces that fell in the latter category, Marc Mellits' "Splinter" (2014) and Sam Pluta's "Tile Mosaic (after Chagall)" (2010), made by far the strongest impression.
Mellits grew up with Bach and Pink Floyd in his ears, and the ease with which his wind quintet "Splinter" straddles the classical-vernacular divide is perhaps its most winning feature. There are eight brief movements, each named after a different tree, each couched in a now-lyrical, now-jaunty post-minimalist grammar. Coordinating the music's bustling contrapuntal activity could not have been easy, but Monday's wind players — Andrew Nogal, oboe; Daniel Won, clarinet; J. Lawrie Bloom, bass clarinet; William Buchman, bassoon; and Jeremy Ruthrauff, saxophone — managed to do so brilliantly.
Ear Taxi wraps and MusicNOW opens with a diverting array of music. by Lawrenc A. Johson of the Chicago Classical Review October 11, 2016. Review of Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Music Now Contemporary Music series season opener (and conclusion of the Chicago Ear Taxi contemporary music festival)
The first MusicNOW program of the season also served as the final Ear Taxi event, and proved a nice way to wrap the festival, with a well-varied quartet of works Monday night at the Harris Theater.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra composers in residence Samuel Adams and Elzabeth OIgoinek were the cordial hosts once again. The cumulative effect of Ear Taxi seemed to boost attendance for the CSO's new-music series with Monday's turnoiut by far the largest to date for a MusicNOW eventin the Adems-Ogonek era.
Marc Mellits' Splinter made an inviting curttain-raiser. Written in 2014, this wind quintet is cast in the form of a non-baroque, baroque suite. The eight shortinsh titled movements are brances or leaves that form the overall musical "tree," says Mellits.
Splinter may not plumb the depths but it is communicative and supremely well crafted wind music. There are passing moments of ruminative introspection in the lyric idylls of "Linden" and "River Birch." But the predominant mode is one of buoyant and amiable bustle, with Mellits deftly varying the timbral combinations as well as providing spotlight moments for each player. One could hardly imagine a more lively and stylish performance than that served up by oboist Andrew Nogal, clarinetist Daniel Won, bass clarinetist J. Lawrie Bloom, saxophonist Jeremy Ruthrauff and bassoonist William Buchman.
New Music at the Green Mill: "One Listener's Interpretation of May 03, 2009 at the Green Mill" by Jeff Kowalkowski
"Bone Metal Meditation" was my favorite piece of the afternoon. I find Charles Lipp's music to be compelling and full force. His knowledge of the woodwinds is unmatched. Combine that power-punch with smart percussion continuo: Steve Butters produced the unison four mallet ostinato between double bongo, cow bell, and wood block, with all attacks simultaneous, while Jeremy Ruthrauff (the best saxophonist in town) activates two distinct registers, sometimes colliding with the thin percussion, sometimes just slightly eliding attacks. This piece uses the absolute (maybe) full range of the Baritone Sax, with amazing timbral control. The piece seemed to be one single gesture, and as listeners we are moved through it, as if in slow motion. This piece definetly put me off-kilter more than any other today.
Robert Falesch: "Verisaras"--This piece is the reason the Green Mill series is vibrant. The care taken in the recorded vocalists' recitation, the flashes of highly processed sounds that speed in and out of perception, the sound of rats talking, the excellence of the high pitched saxophone (again Ruthrauff, now doubling sopranino), crunchy-voice electronic, this is computer music at it's finest, by a computer programmer/poet! I think you should spend more time composing Bob!
Fulcrum Point plays for the movies
By Michael Cameron
Special to the Chicago Tribune
November 14, 2009
At the other extreme of style and cunning was "GRAB IT!" by JacobTV (aka Jacob Ter Veldhuis), a Dutch composer with a twisted obsession with American media. The video revels in quick edits of Las Vegas gambling rituals and a hypnotic score assembled from a live and recorded mix of aggressive post-funk and hip-hop, fused in a raucous jumble of mixed meters and heavy amplification. Jeremy Ruthrauff was the dazzling saxophone soloist.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW closes year with lively mix of young composers
Tue Dec 14, 2010
By Lawrence A. Johnson
Chicago Classical Review
Tangled Loops by Jason Eckhart
...so compelling was the heavy-metal assault of Jeremy Ruthrauff’s hard-charging soprano saxophone that it was impossible not to respond. Pianist Amy Briggs lent equally impassioned support.
Little voice, big impact at busy Mandel Hall
By M. J. Rantala
Hyde Park Herald
April 21, 2004
Polish composer Elzbieta Sikora was on hand
for her Lisboa, Tramway 28, a study in ambiguous borders between reality and fiction. Saxophonist Jeremy Ruthrauff provided virtuosic simpers, stutters and shimmers while Sikora controlled the playback of a tape of intriguing manipulated and mixed sounds of Lisbon.
Contempo program serves up a wealth of brainy stylistic variety
By Wynne Delacoma
Chicago Classical Review
January 13, 2013
Shulamit Ran’s Under the Sun’s Gaze was the program’s longest work and summed up the evening’s brainy delight in musical complexity. Written for nine string, wind and percussion players, its raucous outbursts evoked a merciless noonday sun while its more languorous moments hinted at a Middle Eastern desert cooling into twilight. Wandering onstage midway through the piece, Jeremy Ruthrauff turned his soprano sax solos into hypnotic siren songs.