Letter from London: No worries stance wins out

By JOE HARROP

Rebecca Ryan is a New Zealand singer with a difference. Possessing a thrilling soprano voice of crystal clarity as well as good looks, what marks Ryan out is her iron determination. In the past nine months, her quiet tenacity has brought dramatic results.

Hailing from Bluff, Ryan followed a path familiar to many young New Zealand singers: she started a music degree and picked up another degree along the way. She did this with style - graduating BMus with first class honours and a bachelor of information science from Otago University.

She left for Britain early in 1997, and landed some impressive IT positions with companies including Citibank and Chase Manhattan. She travelled - rattling through Europe in an old London ambulance, running with the bulls in Pamplona and paying tribute at Anzac Cove, Turkey.

With her working visa about to expire, but keen to stay in Britain, studying seemed an attractive option. She was accepted into all three major London conservatories: the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, and the Guildhall School of Drama and Music. She chose the academy.

"It seemed the friendliest place, plus the Guildhall is the gloomiest building." (Anyone who's beheld the bleak exterior of the Barbican Centre, reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984, will know what she means.)

The academy awarded her £700 ($2280) towards her fees of £11,000 ($35,000). Luckily, she had savings and funding from the Southland Community Trust and Otago University.

Encouragement came early - taking second prize in the academy's English Song competition.

In her second year however, funding was difficult to find. Applications to Creative NZ and other New Zealand-based trusts proved fruitless.

She continued to work hard, as she says, "keeping my nose down, not bothering my teachers with personal problems. I didn't need the confidence boosting some young singers need. I knew I needed to learn more repertoire, and gain more experience in performance. I just got on and worked."

In June 2001 she was picked from the sopranos at the academy to sing the newly discovered Handel Gloria for the British public premiere under Laurence Cummings. Two weeks before, she sang in a private performance, for press and invited Handel scholars, conducted by Handel specialist Nicholas McGegan.

The Evening Standard spoke of her "rich and accurate soprano, with a remarkable evenness of tone throughout its considerable range, and a 'no worries' approach to Handel's florid passage work [singing with] almost arrogant ease and astonishing breath control Ms Ryan is at the beginning of an illustrious career."

Ryan laughs at her "no worries" take on Handel's running melodic lines - I believe she was quoted - but she really does find these easy to sing.

Her range springs from the G below middle C on the piano, to the D two octaves above that, and she stresses this is her normal performance range.

Since her success with the Handel Gloria, she has needed this range. Along with several oratorio engagements with choral societies, she records Handel's Silete Venti for Naxos Records this month, and performs Mozart's virtuosic Exultate Jubilate, as well as his Coronation Mass at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on the Queen's birthday in June.

In another feat of determination, Ryan ran the famous London marathon last year in under four and a half hours. Did this interfere with her singing practice? "In terms of singing, not really, as fitness is good for the voice.

"But keeping the energy levels up after two hours of jogging around Regent's Park? That's difficult."

However, one gets the impression a little tiredness wouldn't get in her way. Her reply? "No worries."