Sharon Ruchman’s story started at eight years old with piano lessons, like so many young musicians, but unlike most of us who gave up after a few frustrated attempts at scales, she kept going. Way beyond, actually. We’re talking a Bachelor of Music from New England Conservatory and a Master’s from Yale School of Music. By now, she’s added “violist” to her resume and has six albums under her belt.
“Eleven chapters of a story that never needed words to begin with.”
Ruchman met violinist Artemis Simerson through a mutual friend, and Simerson happened to mention she’d love to play Ruchman’s music. That was apparently all the encouragement Ruchman needed to dive headfirst into writing an entire album of violin and piano duets, her first collection dedicated solely to this pairing. Nine pieces later, including a full three-movement sonata, and we’ve got “From the Heart.” Simerson, who’s spent years with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and has the chamber music chops to back it up, turned out to be the perfect partner for bringing these compositions to life. Sometimes musical chemistry just works.
Ruchman is exploring how a violin and piano can have a proper conversation. The three-movement sonata sits at the heart of the collection, giving Ruchman room to stretch out and really develop her ideas. She moves through different moods and tempos, sometimes pushing the technical limits, sometimes pulling back into reflective spaces. The balance between violin and piano is spot-on.
In a world where “new classical music” often means laptop compositions or pieces that require half an orchestra and three synthesizers, there’s something quietly radical about writing straightforward violin and piano duets. There’s no need to reinvent classical music when you’ve actually got something to say using the tools that already exist.
The bottom line is that Sharon Ruchman and Artemis Simerson have created something genuinely worth your time. Eleven pieces that prove violin and piano still have stories to tell, emotions to share, and conversations to finish. Just two instruments and two talented musicians making the kind of music that reminds you why people fell in love with classical in the first place.
Muse Chronicle 
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