Robert Rutman

Robert Rutman (15 May 1931 – 1 June 2021) was a German visual artist, musician, composer, and instrument builder.

Best known for his work with homemade idiophones in his Steel Cello Ensemble, Rutman is regarded as a pioneer of multimedia performance in his mixing of music, sculpture, film, and visual art.

Born in Berlin in 1931, Rutman's mother was a Jewish actress and his father a Bulgarian brownshirt who died in 1933.

When the Nazis came to power, he and his mother fled Germany, moving to Warsaw in 1938 and then to Finland just before Hitler invaded Poland.

By way of Sweden, Rutman arrived in England in 1939 where he attended refugee schools throughout the Second World War.

After completing his studies, Rutman moved to New York City in 1950, then had to return to West Germany for military service in 1951.

In 1952 Rutman returned to the U.S. and worked as a traveling salesman in Dallas, Texas, before moving to Mexico City to enroll in art school.

He married in Mexico, and the couple had a son, Eric.

In 1962 Rutman returned to New York where he opened a gallery on Charles Street called "A Fly Can't Bird But A Bird Can Fly", which presented poetry, theater, music, and visual art as multimedia events.

Rutman's collaborators included the Beat poet Philip Lamantia, who mentions Rutman in his poem, "The night is a space of white marble", and sculptor Constance Demby, with whom he made his first sound sculptures in 1966.

In 1967 Demby and Rutman held several happening-style events that mixed sonic, visual, and performance art centered around big sheets of metal that the artists had found.

In one piece called The Thing, Rutman wore a white cardboard box and banged on Demby's sheet-metal creation with "a rock in a sock."

In another piece entitled Space Mass, Rutman projected film upon a piece of curved sheetmetal onto which Demby had welded several steel rods that she played as a percussion instrument.

Rutman later remarked, "We thought it would sound good as a xylophone, but it didn't."

Rutman would later make adjustments to the sheet metal-and-rod contraption, converting it into a fully playable and tunable idiophone.

In 1967 Rutman moved to Skowhegan, Maine, where he built a house in the woods and established another multimedia gallery.

Though this gallery sent him into bankruptcy within its four years of operation, it was here that Rutman created the instruments for which he became known.

Rutman made these new instruments from large panels of flexible sheet metal affixed with steel strings or freely swinging rods that he played with a bass or cello bow.

He named one of his creations the steel cello, and another the bow chimes, describing both as "American Industrial folk instruments".

In 1970 Rutman founded the Central Maine Power Music Company (CMPMC) as his first ensemble to play these sculptures.

The CMPMC included Rutman and Demby, with locals Hugh Robbins, Richie Slamm, and Sally Hilmer, and hammer dulcimerist Dorothy Carter, plus occasional guests who all played Rutman and Demby's bowed sheet metal creations.

Rutman's original concept for the group was to have it be made up entirely of handmade instruments, and the group featured a configuration of circular sawblades used as percussion.

But according to Rutman, his invented instruments ended up serving more as decorations for their performances, as the other members of the group brought in traditional eastern and western instruments, such as drums, electronic organ, flute, koto, saxophone, tamboura, and yang chin, as well as electronic musical novelties, including the Moog synthesizer and theremin.

CMPMC performances had a ritualistic quality that incorporated many non-musicians, such as video artist Bill Etra who added visual elements to their shows.

The band toured the East Coast, playing at several planetariums in Massachusetts, as well as Lincoln Center, the World Trade Center, and at the United Nations Sculpture Garden in New York.

Rutman told a reporter in 1974:

"The best way to describe our music is to call it 'not music.' You see, it often happens that when people hear us play, they say, either in anger or in delight, 'That's not music!' It's somewhat akin to the paintings of Jackson Pollock. When the art buffs first saw his work, with the paint drippings and all, they said, 'That's not painting.'"

As Rutman's instruments piqued the interest of aficionados in both visual art and new music composition, his portfolio as an exhibition and concert artist grew.

As art pieces, the steel cello and bow chimes toured to galleries and museums where bows were on hand for anyone to play them.

Though his instruments were tunable, Rutman had no formal musical training aside from sporadic childhood piano lessons.

With neither conventional tuning principles nor systems of notation, it was through alternate means that he began teaching many people to play his instruments.

He moved to Boston's then-bohemian Cambridgeport neighborhood and disbanded the CMPMC to found a new, all-steel music group in 1976: the Robert Rutman U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble, whose members included Suzanne Bresler, Rex Morrill, Warren Senders, Jim Van Denakker, and David Zaig.

A 1977 press release described the group and its instruments:

"The steel cello is 8ft tall and is made from a sheet of stainless steel anchored into a heavy iron stand. It supports one string, which when bowed creates a multitude of resonances, from delicate brittle sounds to deep rich tones. The bow chime, which is shorter, forms a horizontal curve which supports vertical rods, which when bowed produce complementary metallic tones. The Ensemble consists of one steel cello and three bow chimes and together create sounds equal in dynamics to an orchestra."

The Ensemble toured North America, often playing at science museums and art spaces, as well as concert venues.

In 1977 they performed at Harvard University's Science Center and at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

To further document and promote his work, Rutman founded his own label, Rutdog Records, on which he released albums by his Steel Cello Ensemble.

Rutdog also released Dorothy Carter's psych-folk album Waillee Waillee, on which Rutman backs the hammer dulcimerist on his steel cello.

Rutman and Carter continued to collaborate for decades thereafter.

Rutman's instruments were borrowed by American jazz musician Sun Ra during his 1978 residency at the Modern Theater in Boston; Sun Ra (rather unsuccessfully) attempted to play both the Bow Chime and Steel Cello during the concerts.