Ruth Gibson
Principal Viola
Ruth loves communicating through music, taking on an open-minded approach to music-making, and pursuing a diversity of creative projects. As a Samaritan and qualified yoga teacher she strives for meaning and balance on and off the stage. Her recent collaborations have included a Mozart string quintet cycle with the Heath Quartet, Mozart piano quartets with the Linos Piano Trio, Reich and Harvey string quartets with the Hebrides Ensemble and a UK tour of Janacek’s Intimate Letters (from memory) and Written in Fire for quartet and electronics with the Singh Quartet. She is a member of Ensemble 360 and the Manchester Collective, and also regularly plays with Manchester Camerata, Nash Ensemble and the City of London Sinfonia. Ruth founded and directed the String Quartet Collective, the resident ensemble at the Royal College of Music (RCM) until 2016. In this innovative project, Ruth brought together players from different nationalities and generations for a week at a time, collaborating with RCM students and culminating with final performances, some of which were broadcast by the BBC. With the City of London Sinfonia, she is proud to be part of their outreach work year round, creating music with young people with psychiatric illnesses and patients in palliative care.