A former earthquake scientist with a first degree in music, Isabelle Ryder is now an award-winning composer/arranger published by Oxford University Press, and a Visiting Professional in keyboards at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA). Her wide-ranging and colourful music straddles classical, sacred, jazz, and theatre, and is often influenced in more or less abstract ways by the natural world.
As a music student at Oxford, Isabelle gained the joint top First in her year. She transitioned into earthquake science via a Natural Sciences degree at Cambridge, and during this time, she received her first composing commission from the Arts Council of England. After gaining her PhD in Geophysics at Oxford, Isabelle spent three years as a postdoc in Berkeley, California, doing tectonics research and fieldwork on the San Andreas Fault. Returning to the UK, Isabelle soon made a U-turn back into music full-time. In 2023 she won First Prize in the contemporary category of the Fidelio Piano Composition Competition, for her evocative piece Seal Highway, inspired by Greenland fjords (score here). Recent premières include:
Isabelle's 2023 jazz release East Bay Cool, a collaboration with musicians from Cable Road Studios, Liverpool and Leeds, is a heartfelt tribute to her years in California. |