Ruckus
Performance

Ruckus

featuring Emi Ferguson, flute and Rachell Ellen Wong, violin
April 22, 2025

Unearth early music's most playful works, reimagined with roots music energy.

2024/25 Season

Ruckus is a shapeshifting, collaborative ensemble with a visceral and playful approach to early music. The NYC-based ensemble aims to fuse the early-music movement's questing, creative spirit with the grit, groove and jangle of American roots music, creating a unique sound of "rough-edged intensity" (New Yorker). Ruckus' core is a continuo group, the baroque equivalent of a jazz rhythm section: guitars, keyboards, cello, bassoon and bass. Its members are among the most creative and virtuosic performers in North American early music. At the Hop, they are joined by flutist Emi Ferguson and violinist Rachell Ellen Wong to perform Strawberry Fields, a program featuring works by Handel and Sancho, and English Country Dances.

Listen (and even dance) your way through the future of the past.

Funded in part by the Lewis A. Crickard '35A Visiting Performing Artists Fund and the Steven W. Draheim 1966 Fund.

Photo: Fay Fox

Ruckus' debut album, Fly the Coop, a collaboration with flutist Emi Ferguson, was Billboard's #2 Classical album upon its release. Ruckus is the "house band" for Hudson Hall's baroque opera productions, directed by R.B. Schlather. The ensemble made its Ojai Festival debut in 2022, performing a wide range of music: from Bach, to the improvisational scores of Roscoe Mitchell and George Lewis, to a recital featuring Anthony Roth Costanzo, and an original opera by bassist Doug Balliett. Recent highlights include debuts at the Shriver Concert Hall Series in Baltimore, Boston's Celebrity Series, the Caramoor Festival and NYC's Town Hall.
 
Upcoming projects include a co-commission of a large-scale work by pioneering artist and NEA Jazz Master Roscoe Mitchell as part of a Bach & Bird Festival alongside the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet, produced by The Metropolis Ensemble. In 2024 Ruckus and violinist Keir GoGwilt will premiere The Edinburgh Rollick, bringing to life tunes from the Gow Collections of Strathspey Reels, Books 1 and 2 (1784, 1788).

2024/25 Season

2024/25 Season

“the world’s only period-instrument rock band”

San Francisco Classical Voice

“a fizzing, daring display of personality and imagination”

New York Times
Jennifer Koh
Echoes

Music echoes across time, blending tradition with experimentation and inspiring awe and reverence. This season, we will journey through centuries of Western music, with each work reflecting the spirit of its era.

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Dance Heginbotham
2024/25 Season

Art connects. It brings us together and reveals the interrelated nature of our world—the connection within communities, across culture, and even underfoot.

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Interim Hours (through January 6)
Tuesday-Friday: 2-5 pm
The Box Office will be closed December 13 and December 23 through January 1
Open one hour prior to all ticketed events.

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