Showcase

Players and endorsers publish material here so that you can get a good impression on how the Ruby gamba may work for you!

Jay Elfenbein has been our first endorser. While admiring his great talent on the vioal da gamba, bass and other bowed instruments, what strikes us most is the way in which he has taken the viola da gamba to a new level of expression in his jazz music. The title of the song, Inner Urge, couldn’t have been chosen better: the exact reason why we have taken up the Ruby Gamba Project and can’t stop with it….

and so here’s another exemple from this production. A long fragment in which you here many aspects of the Ruby Gamba… percussion, bass, viol…. and some effects like the wah, and distortion.

 Ruby’s Glow

Ruby’s Dawn

(Lubbers/Goorissen 2012)

This piece is based on a chart by my friend Ronald Lubbers. It is a very sweet progression and I like it because it provides the chance to improvise with simple chords. To me that is like taking a small step away form the 17th century procatice of improvising on a ground (a repeated bass line with chords). The computer with its elaborate applications for music (we used Logic here) gives the possibility to play line upon line, and edit every detail afterwards to create a composition of sorts. It is like sculpting a polyphonic construct. In this piece the feel is very intense and full of expectation, like the whole Ruby Gamba Project is. (Jan Goorissen)

Treasures

Heleen van den Hombergh Quartet, album Rush in the Woods

A beautiful album by singer/songwriter Heleen van den Hombergh (buy it at her site!). Along with Bert van den Brink (piano), Joshua Samson (Hang, percussion) and Tony Overwater (Double Bass and Ruby Gamba, with effects) she sings haunting songs that show great concern for the rainforest and the wonders that take place inside it; and the atrocities.

Pressvoices

“Listen to Heleen van den Hombergh and her beautiful accompaniment. All worries are gone for a moment. The music is played so well, and the meaningful lyrics sung so beautifully that listening becomes a real nature holiday” (Financieele Dagblad)

“Van den Hombergh and her united band members take each other to higher levels of performance…Van den Hombergh has an expressive voice (…) her singing is always emotional and the lyrics are universal. She found connections between the inhabitants of the jungle and human beings. That gives an interesting added value to this adventurous album (Heaven, popmagazine)

here a second example from Rush in the Woods, recorder for a live audience in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Earth has waited for them

(fragment from oratorio Stray Sands 2005) Overwater/Goorissen

This piece was performed and recorded in 2005. Performed by Monique Krus, the Yuri Honing Trio, Jan Goorissen and chamber choir Novo Cantare.

The piece is a dedication to all dispersed people who have had to flee from poverty, violence, war or climatic disaster. People see no other option that to be blown forth as stray sands over the surface of the earth and settle wherever thay can get a grip into a locality. To all of those, who are often denied a real existance by the fearful inhabitants of those localities. Stray Sands cannot be stopped.

Performed on a plucked Ruby gamba, soprano singer Monique, and violent gushes of sound by the Yuri Honing Trio (Yuri Honing, Tony Overwater, Joost Lijbaart)

Samples from movie project

©Jan Goorissen 2007-2012

No Files Found

This project represents the Ruby Gamba and recorders along with electronic music. Composed with Logic. The Ruby Gamba is used in several and rather eclectic fusion-styles along with the “modern recorder” by German recorder maker Mollenhauer (model Paetzold-Tarasov.)

Namo Amida

A Sanskrit mantra sung by Ingrid Zweers. Arrangement Ronald Lubbers, Ruby gamba and recorder Jan Goorissen, choir from Muziekfabriek Giesbeek

A sweet arrangement with percussion, Ruby gamba Bass paying, a Mollenhauer Modern Recorder made out of Grenadilla wood. A modest but important role for the Ruby Gamba. Less is sometimes more!

Earthing

Fragment of an improvisation on a painting by Wilka Zelders. BOW plays, with voice, piano, percussion and Ruby Gamba.

Example of the wide range of sonic possibilities of the Ruby Gamba, together with really sensitive piano playing, percussion and textless singing.

Yuri Honing Trio in the BIMhuis Amsterdam

Tony Overwater playing the Ruby Gamba as an extended upright bass. Beautiful song!

Tony Overwater Solo

Bimhuis Amsterdam

Tony plays the Ruby Gamba like a huge guitar, later on with a looper.

Use large loudspeakers, turn up the volume.

Star Striped Banner

Victor Penniman plays the Ruby Gamba Hendrix Style!

Please note: dangerous for tea slurping patriots!

Tanabata

A musical film with the Ruby Gamba as an integrated instrument within an electronic soundscape. by Victor Penniman