fiona ryan

My name is Fiona (fi).
I write music, I play and sing music (sometimes my friends help with this), I sometimes record the music, and I try think of ways to share it with other people. I wrote my first (short) piece of music when I was 8 or 9, and eventually I went to University and studied music and graduated (twice). After a few years off, I decided I needed to return to making music full time, and returned to university to study music some more.
I love working with people on creative projects, so if you're a person with a creative project and you enjoy collaboration, let me know!
If you would like to find out more about music I have written, please feel free to send me a message or visit my website.
channelling 1594 is a sort of Renaissance remix (though, as usual, some of the detail is lost by compressing it to fit on myspace)
The music is made by the following recipe: Ingredients: Write “Happy Birthday!” on paper on top of a flat microphone, Consort Songs by William Byrd, "Since First I Saw Your Face” by Thomas Ford, A chord from a harpsichord improvisation by John Farah, Temporally Displaced Clarinet Consort of One, Re-imagining the world’s earliest Recordings, Feedback, Distortion & Noise, A Choir of One, Imitation Cathedrals and Castles, Delay: The modern Imitative Counterpoint (... or is it postmodern?), Sound Collage of Counterpoint, Development, Poly modality & Unexpected coincidence To Prepare: Place raw ingredients messily into computer program. Mix vigourously and thoughtfully.
Music for Onion Ritual is a piece of music for any number of performers (in this case they are: Chris - piano; Dan - Saxophone; Dan - Violin; Fiona (me) - clarinet; Mike - glockenspiel; Sarah - flute). This piece of music is based on the idea of peeling away the layers of an onion. The musical score is actually made up of several sheets of transparency paper layered on top of each other - the music begins with complex gestrues and as each layer is removed, a simpler variation is revealed until a plainchant-like melody is revealed at the core of the "onion." This is a (compressed) recording of a performance of this piece around Halloween 2007 at a composition concert.
Song about Tomatoes and Vitamins was written for a friend who made fun of the way I said the words tomato and vitamin. As a gesture of kindness, I learned the American pronunciation of these words for him, and recorded a song about tomatoes and vitamins. All the sounds are me singing, and making sounds with actual vitamins and tomatoes.
Voice in the Wilderness was written for, and performed by singers at an Advent concert in 2006 at Canadian Martyrs Church in Halifax. The musicians and singers were all members of choirs at Canadian Martyrs St. Thomas Aquinas Church, or the St. Mary's University Champlaincy choir. In performance, the clarinet (and one vocal) soloist is in the centre facing the audience, and the male and female choruses are somewhere else, beside or behind the listeners - creating a sense of echoing voices ringing through a mountainous wilderness.
Irish Lament is a project I did for a film music class in which I had to write music for a hypothetical film scene. I decided the scene would be set in a Celtic castle by the sea. Please check the "LYRICS" section to see the words and their translation. I tried my best with the Irish words from my telephone irish tutorial, but I didn't have anyone there to correct me after I did the recording, so I apologise if there is anything seriously awry (apart from any normal variations in regional dialects). This one's definitely the more folk music side of what I do!
Wake Up/What do you Need is a track of excerpts from an 8 minute (music) video project i made in 2006 for a Digital Video Media class. The story of the video was inspired by Oscar wilde's short story "The Young King" (a story I highly recommend). The video follows the story of a young woman who gradually recognises and faces her own greed and excessive materialism. I did not perform this song myself: the singer in the middle of the song is Erin, the singer in the next section is kerrianne (who also played some cello riffs in the first half), Jamie played piano, and Ben played guitar... computer and I painstakingly worked out the rest!
I've written some new music and have other projects planned, so please check back for changes and updates!Hope you enjoy your visit! Please come listen and read again!