LIFE AND EDUCATION

Raymundo "Ryan" Cipriano Pujante Cayabyab was born on May 4, 1954 in Santa Cruz, Manila, he was among the four children of Alberto Austria Cayabyab and Celerina Venson Pujante. Ryan Cayabyab's mother was an opera singer and a professor at the University of the Philippines's (UP) College of Music. As early as age four, Cayabyab was already having piano lessons 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 and shortly prior to her death at age 43 requested that the none of her children take up a career in music. 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 using 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 who is a reputed film and theater actor at the time, who often worked with actress-singer Nora Aunor. Then-Senator Salvador Laurel taking notice of Cayabyab's talent in music 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.