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, Pianist | |
| Instrument(s) | Classical Guitar, Lute, Piano, Keyboards | |
| Years active | c. 1980–present | |
| Label(s) | Ray Lynch Productions Windham Hill |
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| Website | www.raylynch.com www.onestopmusiclicensing.com www.myspace.com/raylynchmusic |
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Ray 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 left college after one year and moved to Barcelona, Spain where he apprenticed to the classical guitar teacher, Eduardo Sainz de la Maza, for four years[1]. Leaving Spain, Ray then went to the University of Texas where he studied music composition. While at college Lynch was invited to New York 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, CA before licensing the music to a distributor.[1]. Deep Breakfast has sold over 1 million copies without the benefit of performing[2], 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 3 new music tracks.
Contents |
[edit] Discography
- The Sky of Mind (1982)
- 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] Trivia
- 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.
