Liz Ryder

After years of study and practice, performance and teaching, and an international life, Liz Ryder now finds herself in her new home town of San Francisco.

Not long after she was born in Los Angeles, California to parents who are actors and artists, her family soon packed up for her father’s native England, where she grew up in an environment rich with creativity, and in a landscape rife with folk legacy. They lived in and around the countryside of Shropshire and Worcestershire mostly, and in small, rural market towns like Leominster, Ludlow, and Worcester City, places where the folk music tradition still thrives. 

Liz was exposed to her parents collection of music which such diverse artists as Cat Stevens, The Incredible String Band, Beethoven, The Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, and Bill Haley and the Comets. As she matured and her own tastes developed, folk music and traditional song remained a constant in her life, as did classical and choral music, but she soon found herself drawn to artists like Tori Amos, Ani Difranco, Joan Baez and Kate Rusby. She has garnered vocal and stylistic comparison to DiFranco and Baez.

All of this exposed her to a language she intrinsically understood, even before her abilities allowed her to express it clearly. All along, she was developing her composition skills and finding it to be a natural path to follow, even as finding her own voice presented new challenges. Of songwriting and composing she says, “It’s the only thing that's rested in me, and that is completely confusing at the same time!”

Along the way, she has received inspiring accolades including recognition as a semi finalist at the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Awards (2002), winning a composition competition at 16 for an a’capella choral setting, and receiving the undergrad prize for composition at University of Wales, Bangor (2004).