Bing & Ruth

Brooklyn-based ensemble Bing & Ruth, led by pianist and composer David Moore, perform post-minimalist music with a cinematic sensibility. The ensemble size shifts from project to project based on the scope of Moore’s pieces, though a core chamber-sized group remains at the heart of Bing & Ruth. Influenced by artists like Arvo Pärt and Steve Reich, their music is often slow to develop and ranges from distant crystalline ambience to massive glowing crescendos. Instrumentally, they employ everything from strings, wind instruments, and voice to lap steel, drums, and tape manipulations. 2014 full-length Tomorrow Was the Golden Age became the group’s breakthrough release, receiving critical acclaim and reaching ambient, post-rock, and neo-classical audiences alike. David Moore formed Bing & Ruth in 2006 with several other music student friends attending New York City’s prestigious New School. They released a pair of CD-Rs in 2006 and 2007, followed in 2010 by their first full album, the warm and deeply textured City Lake. For a time, Moore shifted his focus to his other more folk- and Americana-related projects like the Piledrivers and Pepper Johnson before reconvening Bing & Ruth in 2014 with a smaller seven-piece ensemble. Their second LP, Tomorrow Was the Golden Age, arrived later that year. In November 2015, RVNG Intl. reissued City Lake with three bonus tracks from its recording sessions. In late 2016, the ensemble signed with 4AD and announced a new album, No Home of the Mind. Performed by the quintet of Moore, Jeremy Viner (clarinet), Mike Effenberger (tape delay), Jeff Ratner (bass), and Greg Chudzik (bass), the LP was released in February 2017. Bing & Ruth returned in 2020 with Species, a set of compositions exploring the possibilities of the Farfisa organ, along with clarinet and double bass. ~ Timothy Monger & Paul Simpson