Seonaid Rijo

Seonaid Ann Rijo is of Scottish/Dominican descent and currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her husband and two children. Seonaid spent her childhood between Miami, Florida and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic where she was exposed to a variety of musical styles and the vibrant culture of the islands. Seonaid began singing at an early age and was influenced by her mother and grandmother, both singers, who provided her early training. Seonaid attended New World School of the Arts, a fine arts high-school in Miami, Florida. As a teenager she traveled throughout the United States and Russia with an international organization known as Peace Child, whose mission was to promote peace through the universal force of the arts. Seonaid’s involvement with this organization awakened within her the realization of the power that music can exert not only on individuals but on society as a whole. Seonaid went on to study classical vocal performance at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where she was awarded the distinguished Artist Diploma. She then obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Seonaid’s music reflects the uniqueness and diversity of her personal experience yet always seeks to express itself in ways that are universal and can appeal to a wide ranging audience. Her music is intensely personal, and therefore highly focused on the nuances of language, her lyrics are profound, yet accessible, and communicate to the receptive listener on many levels. Feeling that she needed alternate ways of expressing herself, Seonaid has explored various genres and her music is truly an amalgam of styles that weave a tapestry of sound as intriguing as it is beautiful. Her melodies are innovative and sensitive to the text, conveying the meaning as well the sentiment behind the words. Able to juxtapose the often conflicting tensions of the human experience, Seonaid’s music is much more than background it is an audible work of art framed by the human experience and lending the listener an outlet whereby unspoken and often an unrealized emotions can find expression.