The guitarist Jürgen Ruck considers it a privilege to have been able to actively shape the role of his instrument in contemporary music for three decades, as a soloist, chamber and ensemble musician, as a university teacher and especially in his collaboration with composers.

An outstanding aspect of his artistic activity is his close connection with the Frankfurt Ensemble Modern and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The world premieres of Frank Zappa's "Yellow Shark", Hans Zender's "Winterreise", Helmut Lachenmann's "Zwei Gefühle" and "Concertini" and Wolfgang Rihm's "Jagden und Formen", milestones in recent music history, are just a few examples of the countless Ensemble Modern projects in which Jürgen Ruck has been involved. Ruck played the solo part in the world premiere of György Kurtág's "Grabstein für Stephan" in 1991 with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Zoltan Pesko and subsequently in numerous other concerts under Claudio Abbado, Peter Eötvös and Sir Simon Rattle; he also regularly appears as a guest musician in the orchestra.

As a soloist, he has performed with the Scharoun Ensemble, the Ensemble InterContemporaine Paris, the London Sinfonietta, Phace| contemporary music Vienna and the radio orchestras of WDR, NDR, SWR, SR, RAI Milan and ORF Vienna.

Ruck's repertoire includes music from the 16th century to the present day. He performs in a wide variety of chamber music ensembles and has appeared at many international festivals.

"Jürgen Ruck (...) possesses great poetic musicality, which seems to translate effortlessly into playing thanks to his unusual technical ability. I really love Ruck's interpretations of my music," said Hans Werner Henze, with whom Ruck had the pleasure of working on many occasions. His important works for guitar form a particular focus of his repertoire. Among other things, Henze entrusted Ruck with the arrangement and premiere of two new compositions for guitar duo. The CD recording of these works together with Elena Cásoli received an ECHO KLASSIK 2000.

For several years, Jürgen Ruck has been performing very successfully with his project "Caprichos Goyescos", a cycle of solo compositions written especially for him, each of which refers to Francisco Goya's famous series of etchings "Caprichos". The composers are outstanding representatives of contemporary music: Detlef Heusinger, José María Sánchez Verdú, Clemens Gadenstätter, Cathy Milliken, Bruno Dozza and Elena Mendoza.

Jürgen Ruck was head of the guitar studio at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. He has been passionately teaching a successful guitar class at the University of Music Würzburg for 30 years.