Edward Ruchalski – SONIC MAIL
Experience this work on the hillside.
Sonic Mail is a collaborative sound experience by Edward Ruchalski and Sayward Schoonmaker. Comprising sounds recorded by Ruchalski during his 2016-18 SQHAP residency and in his yard in Syracuse, NY, Sonic Mail invites individual listening where the “sound mail” melds with the ambient sonics of the park. In addition to this site-specific experience, the field recordings are shared on the Art Park’s social media outlets.
Ruchalski is a composer, sound artist, field recordist, and maker of his own instruments. He has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Helen Boatwright, Syracuse's Society for New Music, and Fuse Trio, among others. Ruchalski’s work has been chosen for performance by the Buffalo Guitar Quartet, Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, Robert Black, Shiau-uen Ding, Stephen Porter, and others. His compositions have been performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, Mass MOCA, Miller Theatre, Symphony Space on Broadway, the Festival of Miami, Harvard University, Yale University, Kirk in the Hills in Detroit, the Everson Museum of Art, and elsewhere. Ruchalski's composition "For Carrie Mae Weems" has been performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. as part of MacArthur Genius Fellow Carrie Mae Weems' production, Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, a gift for Barack and Michelle Obama.
In 2019, Ruchalski was awarded an artist residency at Wave Farm where he and fellow collaborator, Stephen Bradley, installed Spider Cricket, a multi-phonic ecological radio installation informed by Wave Farm’s biophonic and radiophonic soundscape. Ruchalski and Bradley produce a radio show for Music for Open Ears, called Bells, Bugs, Whispers & Plinks (WGXC.org).
Ruchalski’s audio works for radio have been broadcasted on Short Waves/Long Distance (Philadelphia), Radio Web MACBA (Barcelona), Pioneer Works (Brooklyn), Resonance FM (London) and art@radio on the River Hull (Bristol).
In 2016, Ruchalski was awarded a two-year artist residency at Stone Quarry Hill Art Park. The residency culminated in a multimedia solo show, Pond Songs: Recordings and Photographs of Green Frogs and Aquatic Insects. Ruchalski’s composition, “Winter Light,” is included on the Innova recording Serendipity (2009), his arrangement of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit” is included on Endeavor Classics’ recording of pianist Andrew Russo, Mix Tape (2008)—and his work is included on eleven other compilations of note. To date, he has twenty-four solo studio recordings available, including: WaterTrain (Humbug, Norway); Dark Night (Afe, Italy); Refined Localities (Taalem, France); and Four Pieces for Acoustic Guitar and Field Recordings (Pseudoarcana, New Zealand).