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5C8EBBF5-75D4-4F02-8459-3E29F74E8A27.jpe

the attempt to anchor oneself in time

and to eloquently arrange surreal debris of a memory

Ruth Kemna is a young artist, experimenting with music, performance, circus and video.
Growing up in a village in Western Germany she started playing the violin at an early age. Later she also began playing viola and became soon a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Germany and various chamber music ensembles. Playing with artists like Sir Simon Rattle, Mario Venzago, Kyrill Petrenko, STING she was doing a lot of tours everywhere in the world.

She started studying viola at the University of Music, Theatre and Media Hannover and continued her studies at the University Mozarteum Salzburg and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Her professors were Volker Jacobsen (Artemis Quartet) and Veronika Hagen-Di Ronza (Hagen Quartet) and she did masterclasses with Jean Sulem, Tatjana Masurenko, Thomas Riebl, Hartmut Rohde, Barbara Westphal and Garth Knox.
As a chamber musician, she played at numerous international festivals such as the Kammermusikfest Lockenhaus, the Podium Festival Esslingen, the Davos Festival, the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele or the Heidelberger Frühling.

She became the principal viola of the Hamburger Camerata and had a temporary contract with the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover.

She played with the Klangforum Wien, the Ensemble Modern and the Orchester im Treppenhaus.


Ruth Kemna did courses for Contemporary Dance at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance and at DOCK11 in Berlin. Since then she regularly works together with dancers and performers and develops her own choreographies and pieces. 

Her viola theatre play "Biography: reset oder auf der Suche nach Kylvirien" was awarded the 2018 Award for Excellence by the University Mozarteum Salzburg as an innovative master's degree.
In 2017 she initiated the Serendip Festival for Music and Performance in Groznjan, Croatia. 
Since 2018 Ruth Kemna is accompanying the largest gymnastic show in Europe, the “Feuerwerk der Turnkunst” as a musician and performer. 


In January 2020 she was part of the postcolonial mine-oratory “Hercules de Lubumbashi“ in the DR Congo which is criticizing the exploitation of mine workers by big international companies and afterwards travelled through this country by playing viola in little villages and exchanging musical ideas.


She were part of the scholarship program “Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now“ which organizes free concerts for people in hospitals, retirement homes, orphanages, penal institutions, hospices or other social institutions.
She also holds a Masters degree of “Applied Theatre“ at the Thomas Bernhard Institut at the University Mozarteum Salzburg.

Currently she lives in Palermo to develop intercultural, documentary performances, mostly dealing with the border between the European and African continent in the mediterranean sea. 

She has toured through many countries in Europe, China, South America, the DR Congo and South Africa.

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