Ryan Cayabyab
Raymundo Cipriano Pujante Cayabyab, known professionally as Ryan Cayabyab, is a Filipino musician, composer and conductor of Original Pilipino Music. He was the Executive and Artistic Director for several years for the defunct San Miguel Foundation for the Performing Arts. He was named National Artist of the Philippines for Music in 2018.
His works range from commissioned full-length ballets, theater musicals, choral pieces, a Mass set to the unaccompanied chorus, and orchestral pieces, to commercial recordings of popular music, film scores and television specials.
He composed the Da Coconut Nut Song performed by his Smokey Mountain band, Cayabyab's current project includes the Ryan Cayabyab Singers, a group of seven singers comparable to Smokey Mountain in the early 1990s. After FreemantleMedia decided not to renew the Philippine Idol franchise, Cayabyab transferred to rival show Pinoy Dream Academy, replacing Jim Paredes as the show's headmaster. PDA 2 started on June 14, 2008. He also became the chairman of the board of judges for GMA Network's musical-reality show To The Top.
He is the executive director of the PhilPop MusicFest Foundation Inc., the organization behind the Philippine Popular Music Festival.
Early life and education
Born Raymundo Cayabyab on May 4, 1954. At age four, Cayabyab was learning piano from music students' boarders while accompanying his mother in the UP campus. He was also often brought to music rehearsals in the Abelardo Hall by his mother. When Cayabyab was six years old, his mother died due to cancer at the age of 43. According to Cayabyab later in life, that his mother discouraged him and his sibling from pursuing a musical career due to hardship his mother herself experienced as a musician.After his mother's death, Cayabyab stumbled upon a box full of piano pieces left behind by UP music students, and used the manuscript to teach himself play the piano. By age 14, he was able to perform Johann Sebastian Bach's preludes and a solo piano reduction of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
Graduating from high school, at age 15 he was able to secure a job as a pianist of a bank's chorale group. His earnings would later fund his collegiate studies. Cayabyab initially took up a bachelor's degree in business administration major in accounting at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, as a way to honor his mother's request.
In 1972, Cayabyab became involved with the Philippine Madrigal Singers and became acquainted with Victor Laurel, a film and theater actor at the time, who often worked with actress-singer Nora Aunor. Senator Salvador Laurel, taking notice of Cayabyab's talent, convinced him to pursue collegiate studies in music and offered him a scholarship. With the consent of his father, Cayabyab moved to the UP College of Music the following year.
Cayabyab took ten years to graduate from the UP College of Music due to doing tours within that period. He earned a Bachelor of Music, Major in Theory degree in 1983.
Career
After graduating from college, he became a full-time professor for the Department of Composition and Music Theory in the UP Diliman for almost two decades.At the turn of the 21st century, Cayabyab was considering a move to migrate abroad with his family. Danding Cojuangco offered him a position to produce and perform new music to add to the Philippine music scene; Cayabyab accepted the offer as Executive and Artistic Director of the San Miguel Foundation for the Performing Arts. He served there for several years until the sudden closure of the foundation.
As music director, conductor and accompanist, Cayabyab has performed in the United States with Philippine music figures, at venues including Avery Fisher Hall in the Lincoln Center in New York City; Carnegie Hall in New York; the Kennedy Center and the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.; the Shrine in Los Angeles; the Orpheum in Vancouver; and Circus Maximus of Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip.
He has traveled as music director in most of the Southeast Asian cities, in the cities of Australia as well as in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States. He has worked in the same shows with Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra, as well as conducted the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra for special performances of American jazz singer Diane Schuur and pianist Jim Chappel.
He has performed as music director in command performances for King Hasan II in Rabat, Morocco, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia of Spain in Manila, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in Tangiers, Queen Beatrix at the Noordeinde Palace in the Netherlands, and U.S. President Bill Clinton in Boston, Massachusetts.
In Manila, he has conducted the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines for a concert of Philippine and American contemporary music; and the Manila Chamber Orchestra for a concert of his original works.
Cayabyab only wrote three songs in the 2010s, due to focusing on promoting Original Pilipino Music for most of the period. In 2020, due to the idle time caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Cayabyab was able to write at least ten songs in 2020 alone, two of which was made available in Spotify.
Advertising
Cayabyab composed a jingle for an advertisement of the soft drink brand Sarsi, entitled "Sarsi: Angat sa Iba" in 1989.Under collaboration with Philippine fruit juice brand Locally, Cayabyab did the composition for "Prutas Pilipinas" a 2020 contemporary folk song which featured fruits cultivated in the Philippines. The lyrics was written by Noel Ferrer and the song was performed by The Company.
Television
Ryan Ryan Musikahan, the television show, has won a total of fourteen awards as Best Television Musical Show and for Cayabyab, the Best Show Host in various television award-giving bodies. Likewise, as an artist, producer, arranger, and composer, he has won a total of eighteen awards from the recording industry for various commercial recordings. He has produced albums of the Filipino teen group Smokey Mountain, Broadway and West End's diva, Lea Salonga, and Spanish singer Julio Iglesias.In 1987 he rearranged the classical tinged version of ABS-CBN jingle, which was used in the network's Station ID from 1987-1995. He also composed the "ABS-CBN Millennium Overture", which was used in the ABS-CBN New Millennium Station ID in 2000.
Theater
His theater musicals El filibusterismo and Noli Me Tángere have won acclaim and have been performed extensively in the cities of Japan in 1994 and 1996. They received a special NHK broadcast in November 1996, and in Kuala Lumpur in the same year. Another musicale, Magnificat, has had nearly 200 performances.His other musicals include Katy, Alikabok, Ilustrado and the classic pop-ballet Rama Hari. Katy would become Caybyab’s most famous musical in the 1980s.
His latest opera, Spoliarium, premiered in February 2003 at the Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo of the CCP, and is to be followed by another opera also with Asensio, Mariang Makiling at Ang Mga Nuno sa Punso, with music also by Ryan Cayabyab.
In 2011, he composed for the concert Ageless Passion, which was commissioned by the family of retired Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban, and staged at the Meralco theater. In 2016, "Ageless Passion" was staged as a full musical, reuniting Cayabyab and Agustin.
LORENZO, a musical on the life of St. Lorenzo Ruiz, also showcases music composed and arranged by Cayabyab. LORENZO started its runs in September 2013.
Other
Cayabyab composed "Mabuhay", the opening song of Miss Universe 1994 pageant, held in Manila, Philippines.In 2005, Cayabyab composed the official soundtrack for the 23rd edition of the Southeast Asian Games in Manila.
In 2006, Cayabyab signed on as a resident judge for the first season of Philippine Idol, offering critiques for the contestants on the reality-talent show. He was chosen by the top guns of Philippine Idol, while the other two judges, Pilita Corrales and the late Francis Magalona, had to undergo auditions. He also composed the themes of TV Patrol and The World Tonight in 1993 and it was used until 1996 for TV Patrol.
In 2019, Cayabyab composed the theme song for the 30th edition of the Southeast Asian Games, "We Win as One"; with lyrics by playwright Floy Quintos, and sung by Lea Salonga.
Achievements
Ryan Cayabyab is 2004's Gawad CCP para sa Sining in Music. On February 2, 1999, he was selected as one of the 100 awardees of the CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts. He became the first recipient of the Antonio C. Barreiro Achievement Award on May 4, 1996, for significant and lasting contributions to the growth and development of Filipino music. Likewise, on June 18, 1996, Awit Awards, the recording industry awards, awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award for "invaluable contribution and outstanding achievements in the promotion and development of Filipino music." The University of the Philippines Alumni Association has conferred upon him the Professional Award in music for the year 1998. In 2012, Ryan won the MYX Magna Award in the Myx Music Awards 2012 for his achievements in music and in the OPM industry.specializes in developing outstanding performance artists is run by Emmy Cayabyab, Ryan's wife. Established in 1986, the music studio has trained a whole generation of young singer-performers who have become nationally known Filipino performing artists.