Cunningham, Ruth

She is a singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound healing practitioner and teacher who was brought up in Millbrook, New York, and studied at the New England Conservatory of Music where she received a degree in Performance of Early Music. Living in Manhattan she became a founder member of the acclaimed female a-cappella group Anonymous 4 around 1986 and remained with them until 1998. With them she performed at countless concerts, festivals and on ten recordings. She has also been heard singing with other ensembles such as The Choir of St. Mary the Virgin, Early Music New York, Pomerium and The Vox Vocal Ensemble to name just a few. She re-united with Anonymous 4 in 2007 to resume touring and recording and at the same time she embarked solo Light and Shadow where she uses her improvisational skills on sacred music and sings chants that are traditional from various global locations and also performs music on many different instruments such as the renaissance flute, piano and medieval harp. The recordings she has made during the course of her career include her own Harpmodes: Journey for Voice and Harp and Light and Shadow: Chants Prayers and Improvisations as well as 11,000 Virgins, A Lammas Ladymass, The Lily and The Lamb, Love’s Illusion, On Yoolis Night and Voices of Light by Anonymous 4 , Music of Medieval Love by Early Music New York, Inside Chants with Ana Hernandez, Antoine Busnoys, Carolus Maximus and The Mannerist Revolution by Pomerium, Invoking the Muse with Layne Redmond, Sacred Light with Diana Stork. As a teacher and sound healer she has held many workshops where she demonstrates the use of music as an aid to healing and spiritual connection, teaches renaissance flute and recorder at Amherst Early Music Workshops and holds classes regularly at New York City’s St. Vincent’s Hospital in their Integrative Stress Management Program.

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