“Ronald Royer returned to the stage for a stellar performance of Tchaikovsky’s masterful Variations on a Rococo Theme. What began as a simple theme with seven variations ended as a dazzling display of virtuosity. Listeners marveled as Royer effortlessly tackled the composer’s leaps, runs and trills…”
–New-Press, Les Hammer, Glendale, California
As a cellist, Ronald Royer has had the opportunity to work with a diverse group of prominent artists, such as Julie Andrews, Emanuel Ax, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Joshua Bell, Ray Brown, Ray Charles, Andrew Davis, Placido Domingo, Jerry Goldsmith, Howard Hanson, Gregory Hines, James Horner, Maurice Jarre, Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, Frank Sinatra, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Smokey Robinson, Michael Tilson Thomas, Sarah Vaughan, Dionne Warwick, Andrew Lloyd Webber, John Williams, and Stevie Wonder.
Born in Los Angeles into a family of professional musicians, Ronald Royer began by studying piano with his mother, Virginia DiTullio Royer. At age 10, he switched to the cello, studying with his grandfather, Joseph DiTullio. He later studied cello with Edgar Lustgarten, Raphael Kramer, Vladimir Orloff and Daniel Domb. While still a student, he had the opportunity to play with the Pasadena Symphony (Daniel Lewis, conductor) and the San Fernando Valley Symphony (Elmer Bernstein, conductor and film composer), as part of a small group of selected music students mentored within a professional orchestra. In 1979, while still in university, he auditioned and was selected to perform with the Utah Symphony for their summer season.
From 1980 to 1990, Mr. Royer worked as a freelance musician, fortunate to have had the opportunity to enjoy a variety of musical experience. He was a member of the Los Angeles-based American Jazz Philharmonic (formerly named the New American Orchestra), conducted by film composer Jack Elliot. In 1981, he toured throughout the western United States with the Harvey Pittel Trio (classical saxophone, cello and piano) for Columbia Artists. He was a member of the Pacific Symphony for the 1982-83 season. In 1982 with conductor Christopher Fazzi, he co-founded and played principal cello with the Glendale Chamber Orchestra, a professional ensemble which lasted through to 1989. In 1982 and 1983, he performed with the American Ballet Orchestra for their Los Angeles series. He performed at the 2nd American Cello Congress in Phoenix in 1984 and performed with the Utah Symphony in the winter of 1985. During the school year of 1985-1986, Mr. Royer did a Master of Music in Cello Performance at the University of Toronto, and was associate principal cellist of the Carmel Bach Festival in the summer of 1986. He performed concerts and recorded two CDs with the Toronto Symphony throughout the 1987-88 season and was substitute principal cellist for the Windsor Symphony in the fall of 1988. He regularly performed on chamber music series, including several for the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum Chamber Music Concerts broadcast live on KFAC FM. He performed concertos by C.P. E Bach, Lalo, Saint-Saens, and Tchaikovsky, as well as Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody, both of Haydn’s concertos, and several concertos by Vivaldi, with orchestras in the US, Canada and Italy. He also premiered Christopher Fazzi’s Cello Concerto with the Glendale Chamber Orchestra in 1989.
Mr. Royer also worked as a freelance cellist in the Motion Picture and Television Industry in Los Angeles. Examples of films he played for are: Star Trek 3 and 4, Lethal Weapon, Footloose, Gremlins, The Last Starfighter, Firefox, The Outsiders, and Children of a Lesser God. Television shows include Little House on the Prairie, Dallas, Fantasy Island and the mini-series The Thorn Birds. Mr. Royer was also hired to perform for a Los Angeles revival of the musical The King and I starring Yule Brynner, the NBC television special Live From Studio 8H: 100 Years of America’s Popular Music (1981 TV Special), Grammy Living Legends (1989 TV Special honoring Liza Minnelli, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Willie Nelson, Smokey Robinson), and the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards (1990).
In the fall of 1990, Mr. Royer settled in Toronto, and shifted his musical focus to teaching and composition. He did a Bachelor of Education Degree at the University of Toronto and in 1991, began to teach music for the Toronto District School Board. From 1993 to 1997, he took composition classes at the University of Toronto, ending with his second Master’s Degree, this time in composition. In 1997, he became an Instructor of Music at the University of Toronto Schools, and retired in 2018. From 1990 to the present, Mr. Royer has continued to free-lance as a cellist as well as perform chamber music. He has been a member of the Brantford Symphony Orchestra since 2003.
A recent commercial CD featuring his cello playing is I Remember, performed by University of Toronto Schools Alumni Musicians and Friends, found on the Cambria Master Recordings label distributed by Naxos Records.
In 2021 and 2022, Mr. Royer was cellist for recordings of chamber music by several Canadian composers, including Bruno Degazio, John S. Gray, Daniel Mehdizadeh, Elizabeth Raum, Alex Sandoval, Brandon Walker, and Ronald Royer. These works will be on the Akashic Classics label, distributed by Universal.
He enjoys performing with his wife Kaye, a professional clarinetist.
Ronald Royer is a multi-talented musician who is active as a composer, conductor, cellist and recording producer. Born in Los Angeles into a family of professional musicians, he began his career as a cellist, performing with such ensembles as the Toronto Symphony, Utah Symphony, Pacific Symphony, and American Ballet Theatre Orchestra, as well as working in the Motion Picture and Television Industry in Los Angeles.
His concert music has been performed by 70 orchestras, including the international iPalpiti Orchestra in Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles, USA), Sinfonia Finlandia (Finland), Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra (Czech Republic), Athens La Camerata (Greece), Joensuu City Orchestra (Finland), and Members of the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra (Germany). Canadian performances have included the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Victoria Symphony, Hamilton Philharmonic, Orchestra London, Niagara Symphony, Thunder Bay Symphony and Symphony New Brunswick. The Ontario Festival Symphony Orchestra performed his composition Exuberance on tour in China (available on YouTube). Mr. Royer has worked in film and theatre, and this includes (with co-composer Kevin Lau) the score for Gooby, starring Robbie Coltrane and Eugene Levy. He has served as the composer-in-residence for Sinfonia Toronto, Mississauga Symphony, Brantford Symphony, Toronto Sinfonietta and the Scarborough Philharmonic.
Mr. Royer’s music is featured on 15 commercial recordings, with 6 on the Cambria Master Recordings label (distributed by Naxos). Performers on recordings include the Los Angeles Studio Orchestra, Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic, iPalpiti Orchestra, Sinfonia Toronto, 13 Strings of Ottawa, Odin Quartet, HornPipes Duo, Chamber Music Society of Mississauga, Triofus, conductors Jorge Mester, Matthew Jaskiewicz, Tomas Koutnik, Eduard Schmieder and Simon Streatfeild, flutists Louise DiTullio and Nora Shulman, oboist Sarah Jeffrey, clarinets Kaye Royer and Jerome Summers, violinists Conrad Chow and Aaron Schwebel, cellists Coenraad Bloemendal and Simon Fryer, trumpeters Brunette Dillon, Barton Woomert and Steven Woomert, hornist Gabriel Radford, and pianists Aaron Dou, Rachel Kerr, and Lydia Wong.
Mr. Royer is presently serving as the music director and conductor of the Scarborough Philharmonic. He has conducted the Winds of the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra for the Canadian Panorama recording, and Sinfonia Toronto for the recordings Premieres, with violinist Conrad Chow, and The Hollywood Flute, featuring flutist Louise DiTullio. He has conducted the Toronto Studio Orchestra, made up primarily of musicians from the Toronto Symphony and the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra, for the children’s movie Gooby. He has also conducted film scores for The Happy Couple and The Dog. He has appeared as guest conductor of Sinfonia Toronto, Niagara Symphony, Canadian Sinfonietta, Toronto Sinfonietta, Stratford Symphony, Mississauga Symphony, Sinfonia Mississauga, Oakville Chamber Orchestra, York Symphony, and the Susquehanna Symphony (Maryland, USA).
Mr. Royer is married to clarinetist Kaye Royer and is an advocate for music education.
“…by Royer (conductor of this ensemble) is the wonderful Travels with Mozart: Variations on a Theme from the Magic Flute. The quiet introduction is dissonant, but soon the lovely ‘Bei Männern, Welche Liebe Fühlen’ is heard. And then Royer takes the melody to cities Mozart visited—London, Munich, Mannheim, Rome, Prague, Vienna, Paris, Naples—and subjects it to imaginative variations. It is a marvel.” – American Record Guide, July/August 2017
With numerous performances, commissions and commercial recordings, Ronald Royer is a prominent Canadian composer who strives to connect with audiences. Justin O’Dell of The Clarinet magazine writes: “Ronald Royer’s music is beautifully appealing and communicative”, while Stanley Fefferman of Showtimemagazine.ca contributes, “These masterful and witty pieces live up to Royer’s reputation for music that is both entertaining and imaginative.”
His concert music has been performed by more than 70 orchestras, including the international iPalpiti Orchestra in Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles, USA), Sinfonia Finlandia (Finland), Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra (Czech Republic), Athens La Camerata (Greece), Joensuu City Orchestra (Finland), and Members of the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra (Germany). Canadian performances have included the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Victoria Symphony, Hamilton Philharmonic, Orchestra London, Niagara Symphony, Thunder Bay Symphony and Symphony New Brunswick. The Ontario Festival Symphony Orchestra performed his composition Exuberance on tour in China (available on YouTube). He has served as the composer-in-residence for Sinfonia Toronto, Mississauga Symphony (supported by the Canada Council for the Arts), Toronto Sinfonietta, Scarborough Philharmonic and the Brantford Symphony.
His music has been performed by such notables as French flute soloist and conductor, Patrick Gallois, Hungarian viola soloist and former Principal Violist of the Berlin Philharmonic Máté Szűcs, Canadian cellist Shauna Rolston, Canadian/Argentinian pianist Alexander Panizza, as well as ensembles such as the Gryphon Trio, St. Lawrence Quartet, and The Elmer Iseler Singers.
Mr. Royer has worked in film and theatre, and this includes (with co-composer Kevin Lau) the score for Gooby, starring Robbie Coltrane and Eugene Levy. He composed music for the theatrical production (and commercial recording) of The Storyteller’s Bag. He was commissioned to write a work for Canada Day celebrations at Niagara Falls. His work, Water and Light for live orchestra with fireworks was heard on July 1, 2006 by over 20,000 people.
Mr. Royer’s music is featured on 15 commercial recordings, with 6 on the Cambria Master Recordings label (distributed by Naxos). He has consistently received positive and enthusiastic reviews for his music. Performers on recordings include the Los Angeles Studio Orchestra (Jorge Mester, conductor), Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic, (Tomas Koutnik), iPalpiti Orchestra (Eduard Schmieder), Sinfonia Toronto (Ronald Royer), 13 Strings of Ottawa (Simon Streatfeild), Toronto Sinfonietta (Matthew Jaskiewicz), Odin Quartet, HornPipes Duo, Chamber Music Society of Mississauga, Triofus, flutists Louise DiTullio and Nora Shulman, oboist Sarah Jeffrey, clarinets Tibi Cziger, Kaye Royer and Jerome Summers, violinists Conrad Chow and Aaron Schwebel, cellists Coenraad Bloemendal, Yves Dharamraj and Simon Fryer, trumpeters Brunette Dillon, Barton Woomert and Steven Woomert, hornist Gabriel Radford, and pianists Aaron Dou, Rachel Kerr and Lydia Wong. His commercial recordings and live performance recordings are regularly heard on radio, including the CBC and The New Classical FM in Canada and a number of NPR stations in the USA.
Born in Los Angeles into a family of professional musicians, he began his career as a cellist, performing with such ensembles as the Toronto Symphony, Utah Symphony, Pacific Symphony, and American Ballet Theatre Orchestra, as well as working in the Motion Picture and Television Industry in Los Angeles during the 1980’s. Having been inspired by working with a number of concert and film composers, Mr. Royer began serious studies in composition in the 1990’s, receiving a master’s degree in composition from the University of Toronto in 1997. His principal composition teachers were Alexander Rapoport, Walter Buczynski and Lothar Klein. Mr. Royer has received commissioning grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the Laidlaw Foundation and more. He is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre.
In addition to composing, Mr. Royer is presently serving as the music director and conductor of the Scarborough Philharmonic and has guest conducted a number of orchestras. For 21 years, he worked as an Instructor of Music for the University of Toronto Schools. He continues to teach private lessons and be an advocate for music education. Mr. Royer is married to clarinetist Kaye Royer and has composed several works for her.
