He also performed nationally during this period with musicians such as David Gans,[2] Virginia and the Blue Dots, and members of the band moe.
Ruch began his arts-in-education career in 1995, developing curriculum-based music programs for K-12 students around social studies content areas.
In 2014, Ruch developed a series of virtual field trips and online cultural arts programs for the school market.
[3] He was appointed to the New York Council for the Humanities’ “Speakers in the Humanities” program in 2006 and stayed on through the program’s demise in 2015, and is currently a "Public Scholar" with that organization[4] He was project director for the Traditional Arts in Upstate New York (TAUNY) award-winning[5] “W is for the Woods: Traditional Adirondack Music and Music Making” website in 2009, and music director and concert host, producer and musician for TAUNY’s 2013 “Songs to Keep” project.
Ruch was featured in the nationally syndicated 2014 “Songs to Keep” documentary from Mountain Lake PBS, which went on to win a New England Emmy Award.,[6] and in 2017 was featured in the CBS News Sunday Morning cover story on the bicentennial of the Erie Canal[7] Ruch founded The Canal Street String Band in 2010 in Buffalo NY.