• Sharkk Heartt to perform at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park

    April 24, 2023
    For Immediate Release:
    April 11, 2023 - Electronic folk-pop singer-songwriter Sharkk Heartt (Lara Ruggles) to perform two intimate shows during her time as artist-in-residence at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.

    For the month of May, Tucson, Arizona singer-songwriter Lara Ruggles, who performs as “Sharkk Heartt”, will be staying in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park as part of the National Parks Arts Foundation’s artist-in-residence program. Ruggles will be working on a collection of new songs and allowing the incredible landscapes of Hawa’i Volcanoes to inspire the production of her music.

    During her residency, Sharkk Heartt will perform two intimate shows – one at the National Park’s Kahuku Visitor Contact Station on May 13th at 2pm, and the second at Lō’ihi Studios in Hilo on May 26 - this second performance will be limited to only 15 people.

    Ruggles, whose music draws comparisons to Sylvan Esso, Florence and the Machine, and London Grammar, released a 2015 album and a 2011 EP under her own name, with an acoustic folk-pop style, before moving from Denver, Colorado back to her hometown of Tucson, Arizona, surrounding her songs with minimalist electronic arrangements and live vocal looping, and taking on the stage name Sharkk Heartt.

    She has shared a stage with Grammy award winner LeAnn Rimes and toured with queer activist and spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson, but when the COVID pandemic put touring on pause for performers all over the globe, she leaned on another skill – her work in nonprofit fundraising (Ruggles currently works full-time as Director of Development at YWCA Southern Arizona) – to coordinate a statewide advocacy effort in Arizona to get federal funding for independent music venues across the country. The result was that Congress passed a bill providing $16 billion in relief grants for independent venues, the largest public rescue of the arts in US history, and Ruggles was elected to the board of the National Independent Venue Association.

    While this was happening, Ruggles still found time to release new music, putting out the singles “More Than This” and “How to Love”, and the album Wars Our Mothers Fought, between 2020-2022. Her music is both fierce (the Sharkk) and vulnerable (the Heartt), tackling themes ranging from the anxiety and fear of loss that comes with loving deeply, to righteous anger at systems that by valuing life only in terms of the ability to labor and produce, sell all of us short.

    Ruggles is excited to spend the month of May working on new music at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. “Being selected for this residency is a dream come true,” she says. “I can’t wait to find out what Hawai’i will bring out in these new songs.”

    Catch one of Sharkk Heartt’s performances:
     
    May 13 at Kahuku Visitor Contact Station, located in the district of Kaʻū, near mile-marker 70.5 on Highway 11, a one-hour drive from Kīlauea Visitor Center. 2pm.

    May 26 at Lō’ihi Studios, 308 Kamehameha Ave Ste 115, Hilo, HI (reserve tickets at https://tinyurl.com/LiveFromLoihi). Doors at 6:30pm, show 7-9pm, artist meet and greet 9-10pm


    Contact: Lara Ruggles, lararugglesmusic@gmail.com
                    Sierra Keen, sharkkheartt@gmail.com
    Who: Lara Ruggles, AKA Sharkk Heartt, National Parks Arts Foundation’s May artist-in-residence

    What: Two intimate performances during an artist residency at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park

    When & Where: May 13, 2pm at Kahuku Unit in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and May 26, 7pm At Lō’ihi Studios in Hilo.