Ray Lynch
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| Ray Lynch | |
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| Background information | |
| Born | July 3, 1943 |
| Origin | Salt Lake City, Utah |
| Genre(s) | New Age, Instrumental, Classical |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, Guitarist, Mathematician |
| Instrument(s) | Classical Guitar, Lute, Piano, Keyboards |
| Years active | c. 1980–present |
| Label(s) | Ray Lynch Productions Windham Hill |
| Website | www.raylynch.com www.onestopmusiclicensing.com www.myspace.com/raylynchmusic |
Ray Lynch (also known as Raymond Lynch) is a classically trained guitarist and lutenist. He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1943 to a musical and artistic family[1]. His mother was a classical pianist and watercolor artist. At age 6, Ray began studying the piano until age 12, where he was inspired by the music of Andres Segovia’s classical recordings and decided to pursue a career in music. He attended both St. Stephen's Episcopal School as well as Austin High School in Austin, Texas, then attended the main campus of University of Texas for one year before moving to Barcelona, Spain where he apprenticed to the classical guitar teacher, Eduardo Sainz de la Maza, for three years[1]. Leaving Spain, Ray then returned to the University of Texas where he studied music composition. While at college Lynch was invited to New York City to join The Renaissance Quartet where he performed the classical guitar and lute for several years[1].
In the early days of his musical career, Lynch was an unknown classically trained guitarist and lutenist who began writing instrumental recordings that blended classical and electronic components into melodic soundscapes. His debut album, The Sky of Mind (1983) artfully meshed his early classical music training with spatial melodies, and the album became an underground success. When Lynch released his second album Deep Breakfast (1984), he and his wife Kathleen sold over 50,000 albums out of their small apartment in San Rafael, California before licensing the music to a distributor[1]. Deep Breakfast has sold over 1 million copies without the benefit of performing, and was the first independently released album to be certified Gold by the R.I.A.A.[2]
Lynch’s third album No Blue Thing (1989) won two Billboard Awards, and in 1993, Lynch followed up with his fourth album, the classical Nothing Above My Shoulders but the Evening featuring members of the San Francisco Symphony. Lynch’s fifth and most recent album, Ray Lynch: Best Of, Volume One (1998) is a retrospective of his work and includes three new music tracks.
Contents |
[edit] Discography
- The Sky of Mind (1983)
- Deep Breakfast (1984)
- No Blue Thing (1989)
- Nothing Above My Shoulders but the Evening (1993)
- Ray Lynch: Best Of, Volume One (1998)
[edit] Sheet music
Ray Lynch has produced a piano anthology, Ray Lynch Anthology, featuring selected pieces. The book presents each piece in standard notation for both hands, and also features a short interview.
[edit] Recent work
Under his given name of Raymond Lynch, Ray is currently at work on a book that is an enquiry into number and the foundations of mathematics, music tuning theory, cosmologies, metrology, and geodesy and the meaning of precession in ancient mythology. According to his publisher, Eio Books of Vermont, this book will see print in the year 2008.
Recently (August 2007) he contributed to an online journal called "DharmaCafe" where he reviewed the book "Genesis of the Cosmos" by Paul LaViolette.
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- Lynch does not perform live.
- He released the two original pieces from his 1998 compilation to the original Napster peer-to-peer file sharing service.
- He has a version of the seasonal tune Silent Night on the Windham Hill compilation The Carols of Christmas.
- In one of the original John Gotti FBI hidden camera tapes, "Kathleen's Song" from Deep Breakfast can be heard as ambient background music.
- "Celestial Soda Pop" from "Deep Breakfast" is used as the theme music for The Seasoned Traveler program on American broadcast television.
- "The Oh of Pleasure" from "Deep Breakfast" was the original theme music for Dreamland, when it was hosted by Art Bell.
- "The Oh of Pleasure" from "Deep Breakfast" is featured in Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack on the in-game radio station "The Journey" [1].
[edit] External links
- Official website
- Music licensing website
- Official MySpace website
- Ray's review of Paul LaViolette's "Genesis of the Cosmos" (The photo accompanying the article is NOT Raymond Lynch.)
- "The Interview of What Happens - Conversation and Serendipity with Ray Lynch" on AdventuresInMusic.biz, 2007
