Career
Ruch specializes in educational programming, performing over two hundred concerts, lectures, workshops and distance learning programs each year. Ruch began playing guitar in 1980. After playing semi-professionally in Buffalo New York and Washington District of Columbia from 1982-1992, Ruch became a full-time musician in November 1992, initially teaching music and performing regionally from his home base in Buffalo.
Ruch began his arts-in-education career in 1995, developing curriculum-based music programs for K-12 students around social studies content areas.
He continues to work in sixty to seventy schools each year as a performer and teaching artist. In 2014, Ruch developed a series of virtual field trips and online cultural arts programs for the school market.
Ruch has an abiding interest in the traditional and historical music of his home state of New York, having logged thousands of research hours and dozens of recording sessions with older “heritage” musicians. He was appointed to the New York Council for the Humanities’ “Speakers in the Humanities” program in 2006 and stayed on through the program’s demise in 2015.
He was project director for the Traditional Arts in Upstate New York (TAUNY) award-winning “West is for the Woods: Traditional Adirondack Music and Music Making” website in 2009, and music director and concert host, producer and musician for TAUNY’s 2013 “Songs to Keep” project
Ruch founded The Canal Street String Band in 2010 in Buffalo New New York The group was named to the New York State Presenters Network artist roster in 2014-2015, receiving funding for six residency projects across the state.
