Ryan Suleiman
Ryan Suleiman is a composer born to Lebanese and Mid-Western parents in Sacramento. His music engages with dreaming, the natural world, and the understated beauty of everyday life. His one-act chamber opera, Moon, Bride, Dogs, was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a gem” with “an aesthetic that is at once so strange and so accessible.” While his artistic interests vary, he seeks ways of conveying the simultaneity of beauty and dread that characterizes our times.
Suleiman is a three-time Finalist of the ASCAP Young Composer Awards and two-time winner of the FeNAM Student Composers Competition. His music has been performed at several festivals, including SICPP (Boston), June in Buffalo (NY), and the NANOworks Opera Workshop (Atlanta) among others. In addition, he has worked on commissions and collaborations on chamber, symphonic, and operatic works with numerous groups, including West Edge Opera, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Daedalus Quartet, Ensemble Mise-en, Symphony d’Oro, and Camerata Capistrano. His piano cycle, Under Moonlight, was recorded by Jai Jeffryes in his solo album, Amethyst, distributed by Naxos. Ryan received a Ph.D. from University of California, Davis. He teaches composition and music theory privately and as a Lecturer at Sacramento State School of Music.