Bernd Ruf

Life and works

Bernd Ruf grew up in Gengenbach, Baden-Wurttemberg in a musical environment of classical and popular music. During his final two years of school he attended a two-year extracurricular conducting course. After his Abitur, Bernd Ruf studied school music, diploma in music education, jazz and popular music, music director and musicology in Stuttgart and Frankfurt. Following his musical director degree, Bernd Ruf conducted musicals (Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, Dance of the Vampires, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King), assisted Dennis Russell Davies at the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and at the Salzburg Festival, and undertook the conception and direction of various youth concerts at the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker from 1999 to 2004. As a freelance director, he has developed the Crossover Symphony series: special orchestral programmes with African, Asian and Latin American musicians in cooperation with jazz and rock musicians. He has conducted several premieres in Stuttgart with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and in New York with the German-American Chamber Orchestra for composer and violinist Gregor Hubner. He has guested with the likes of the SWR Rundfunkorchester Kaiserslautern, the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hanover and the Bochumer Symphoniker. Bernd Ruf is also a regular guest conductor with the Staatskapelle Halle, the Jenaer Philharmonie and the Wurttembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen. He has worked with names such as Jon Lord (Deep Purple), Roger Hodgson (Supertramp), Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull), Paul McCartney, Randy Brecker, Joe Lovano and Charlie Mariano on his orchestral crossover projects. He is responsible for organising and conducting the annual open-air event Bridges to the Classics at the Handel Festival in Halle. Bernd Ruf has led the GermanPops Orchestra and the European Art Orchestra as music director since 1999. Both orchestras have made an international name for themselves with their studio recordings and regularly perform classical, crossover, film and pop productions for international record labels. Bernd Ruf conducts various orchestral soundtracks for cinema, television and games (The Settlers, Anno, Spellforce, Paraworld, Battleforge, Darksiders, House of the Lion).

As a clarinettist he draws on influences from klezmer, jazz, south-eastern European folk music and classical music. Improvisation is a major part of his music. In 1987 Bernd Ruf joined the ensemble Tango Five, which was founded two years previously in Ravensburg. The members of this ensemble have remained constant since 1995: Gregor Hubner (violin), Veit Hubner (double bass), Karl Albrecht Fischer (piano) and Bernd Ruf (clarinet). Numerous tours have taken the ensemble as far afield as the United States, South America, Georgia and throughout Europe. On one hand, Tango Five plays scenic musical comedy programmes, in which the four musicians tell short, ironic stories using different instruments and a cappella vocals to bridge musical genres. On the other hand, Tango Five plays a repertoire with its roots in south-eastern European folk music, klezmer, gypsy, tango, classical music and jazz.

The cooperation between Tango Five and bandoneonist Raul Jaurena began in 1998 with the CD recording Obsecion. Appearances at tango festivals in Montevideo and Buenos Aires followed. One year later Bernd Ruf wrote and conducted his first Crossover Symphony for the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester of Vienna: Latin Symphony in which Jaurena gave his debut performance with a European orchestra as bandoneon soloist. Other tours followed, the Symphonic Tango Night with the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker and the tango evening ‘Amando a Buenos Aires’, which was performed for several weeks in Stuttgart’s Friedrichsbau-Variete. Furthermore, Bernd Ruf and Raul Jaurena have performed as a duo under the name JAURENA RUF Project since 2007.

Since 2004 Bernd Ruf has headed the field of popular music, jazz and world music at the Lubeck University of Music, of which he became vice president in May 2011. There he developed the ‘Lubeck model’, in which jazz and pop are not taught as an independent degree course, but rather as an integral component of classical degree courses. During the 2006 winter semester he temporarily took over the running of the Institute of School Music; since the 2008 winter semester he is now acting head of this institute.

Awards