Photo by Peter Westra

Amelia Ray is a writer, composer, musician, arranger, producer and performance artist. As a polyglot, she has spent decades examining how similar concepts are expressed differently across languages and cultures. Interpretation is a running theme in her work, which includes several cross-genre albums and singles, performance art projects and, most recently, a one-act musical about cultural appropriation entitled, "The Five Impediments". 

Ray wrote her first song at age eight, and had released three albums before ushering in the digital era with Mr. Gibson Scores Again. Ray performed all vocals and instruments on the 2001 release, whose title is a tribute to the great baseball player Josh Gibson. The albums Music for Autistic People and ON  soon followed, along with a string of festival appearances in Austria, Spain and Slovakia.

In the 2010s, Ray began writing lyrics in other languages and experimenting with film and electronic music. Following a brief stint working as a soloist aboard cruise ships, she developed an interest in performance art. Ray and multidisciplinary artist Einat Amir produced Viljen i Veta during their residency at The Art Nest in Ystad, Sweden, and in 2020, Ray joined longtime collaborator Jake Wood to produce “Hambone Says,” a performance piece that uses contemporary past aesthetic to explore race relations, rage and role reversal in the U.S.

Also in 2020, Ray organised and hosted The Quarantuned Music Festival – a series of 24-hour, worldwide, virtual music festivals to benefit artists affected by Covid-19 concert cancellations. She is currently organising Europe for Ukraine – an initiative to gather musicians from 50 European countries to record an original composition in support of Ukraine.