ABOUT Ryan Davis 'Radia'
Hailed as a “lovely violist” (The WholeNote), Ryan Davis is swiftly emerging as a singular creative voice. A sought-after artist in solo, chamber music, and orchestral performances, he finds himself seamlessly blending in between creative spaces. Ryan was named one of “30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30” by CBC Music in 2021.
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Some recent performance highlights include an appearance on NBA Champion and former Toronto Raptors player Serge Ibaka’s Instagram Live show, How Talented Are You?, and a featured performance of Christos Hatzis’s The Mega4 Meta4, as an invited soloist in the 21C Music Festival at The Royal Conservatory of Music. He had a solo concerto debut with Prairie Virtuosi in 2016, and has returned as a soloist in both 2017 and 2020. Ryan was selected by the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra as their principal violist for the 2017 summer festival, and was chosen as the principal violist of the Colburn Orchestra’s 2018 tour of Scotland and Ireland. He has performed as the principal violist of the Colburn Orchestra, and has concertized with the Colburn Chamber Music Society on multiple occasions.
Ryan has been fortunate to collaborate with many world-renowned musicians, including Martin Beaver, Jonathan Crow, Steven Dann, Roberto Diaz, Mark Fewer, Matt Haimovitz, Joel Link, Anthony Marwood, Johannes Moser, Eric Nowlin, Erika Raum, Wolfgang Redik, Lara St. John, and Axel Strauss.
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Festivals include the Banff Centre for the Arts, Orford Arts Centre, McGill International String Quartet Academy, Festival Napa Valley, Ritornello Chamber Music Festival, and the Toronto Summer Music Festival.
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Ryan is an innovative composer-performer under the moniker Radia, combining inspiration of classical, folk, electronic, and hip-hop music with a loop pedal. His compositions have been featured in diverse spaces and communities, including in Toronto’s Koerner Hall, The Violin Channel, in Los Angeles’s Skid Row, and on ABC Channel 7 News LA. He has worked closely with Street Symphony in Los Angeles, a music and community-building initiative in spaces disenfranchised by homelessness, poverty, and incarceration. Ryan founded The Upnote podcast with trombonist Jared Dickerson and violinist Simone Porter in 2018. They were grand prize winners of the 2019 New Venture Competition, and were selected as the inaugural Entrepreneurs in Residence at The Colburn School for the 2019 - 2020 academic year.
In 2014, Ryan completed a Bachelor of Music with “Outstanding Achievement in Viola” at McGill University as a scholarship student of Andre Roy. He graduated as a Master of Music at the Yale School of Music in 2016 as a student of Ettore Causa, and in 2019 received an Artist Diploma from The Colburn School under the tutelage of Paul Coletti. In 2019, he was chosen as the first ever violist in the Rebanks Family Fellowship & International Performance Residency Program in Toronto.