Ruth Berman

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Ruth Berman was one of the most versatile harpists of the Swing era. Her work ranged from her early orchestral appearances with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, to recordings of her jazz harp arrangements, to her more than 48 years of playing in the studio orchestras of NBC, CBS and ABC. It was during the Swing era of the 1940’s, that she made these recordings for The Standard Program Library, which distributed them across the country. In those days, radio dominated the American imagination much as the internet and technology does in our time. And it was the technology of today that unearthed these recorded treasures. In an internet search for Ms. Berman’s cousin, the late jazz trumpeter Sonny Berman, information on these recordings, thought lost forever, surfaced. Integral to that discovery was the careful cataloging that had been done by jazz collector J. David Goldin, creator of the RadioGOLDINdex: The Definitive Database of Old Time Radio Programs. Without his invaluable contribution to the world of jazz, this music may never have been heard again – at once floating in cyberspace, and hidden deep within the archives of The Library of Congress. To this day, Ruth Berman, active as a composer, is a teacher of a new generation of harpists at the Music Conservatory of Westchester in White Plains, NY and the Hoff-Barthelson School of Music in Scarsdale, NY. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

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