We're delighted to announce that Ruby Hughes has joined the Rayfield Allied roster for general management.
Ruby Hughes is a former BBC New Generation Artist and was winner of both First Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2009 London Handel Singing Competition. She has a passion for performing new repertoire and is a champion of female composers having had many commissions written for her including those by Helen Grime, Deborah Pritchard Judith Weir and Errolyn Wallen.
“Ruby Hughes is increasingly proving to be a key singer of the early 21st century.” Dr. Jürgen Schaarwächter, Klassik.com, 5* (Clytemnestra with BBCNOW, BIS label)
Her repertoire strengths lie in the music of the baroque and 20th and 21st Century. On the opera stage she has sung productions for Theater an der Wein (Roggiero in Rossini's Tancredi, and Fortuna in L’Incoronazione di Poppea), Aix-en-Provence Festival (Euridice L'Orfeo), Opéra de Toulon (Rose Maurrant Street Scene) and Potsdamer Winteroper (title role, Theodora) and in the UK has performed major roles with English National Opera, Garsington Opera and for Scottish Opera.
Festival appearances have included the BBC Proms, Cheltenham, Edinburgh International, Newbury, La Folle Journée, Gent Festival OdeGand, Göttingen, Marlboro, Spitalfields and Beaune and Namur and she has given recitals at Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Schloss Elmau, Vienna Konzerthaus, LSO St Luke’s and in the US at both the Frick Collection and Carnegie Hall, New York.
Ruby is building up an impressive discography including a solo recital recording for Champs Hill records and a disc for Chandos Records with Laurence Cummings and the OAE. For the BIS label she released Heroines of Love and Loss with Mime Brinkmann and Jonas Nordberg dedicated to 17th century women composers which was released to huge critical acclaim including a Diapason d’or award (see trailer for the album here). Further with BIS she has released an album of works by Mahler, Berg and Rhian Samuel, Clytemnestra, with BBCNOW, Mahler Symphony No. 2 with the Minnesota Symphony under Osmo Vänskä and most recently a solo recital disc with Joseph Middleton titled Songs for New Life and Love including works by Mahler, Ives and Helen Grime (see a trailer for the album here).
"Time and again on this album — usefully filled out with Mahler and Berg, predecessors audibly close to Samuel’s heart — soloist and composer make Clytemnestra’s wrenching drama something tangible. When Hughes sings of fire, you feel the heat. At the word “weeping”, your heart breaks. Her eloquence is always unfussy and direct.” The Times, 5* (Clytemnestra with BBCNOW, BIS label)
“[Hughes] was on irresistible form whether conveying the Sapphic languor of Debussy’s Trois chansons de Bilitis or the metaphysical transcendence of Mahler’s Urlicht. And how effective to have a singer delivering such a varied repertoire straight to camera without any sheet music.” Richard Morrison, The Times (Manchester Collective "Breaking Bread" collaboration)
Future recording projects for BIS include a baroque disc with Mime Brinkmann and Jonas Nordberg, a programme with United Strings of Europe including Golijov’s Three Songs for Soprano and String Orchestra and two recordings with Manchester Collective to include commissions by Edmund Finnis and Deborah Pritchard as well as Britten’s Les Illuminations.
Future highlights include those with Orchestre d’Ile de France (Mahler 4), Stuttgart Philharmonic (Britten’s Les Illuminations), Residente Orchestra (Ruckert Lieder), Orchestre National de Lille (Mozart Great Mass in C), Potsdam Kammerakademie, Aarhus Symfoniorkester and recitals at WIgmore Hall and at the Muziekcentrum De Bijloke Gent.
We are thrilled to welcome Ruby to the Rayfield Allied roster, where she will be managed by Nicki Wenham and Sophie Richardson.
