Rhian Sheehan

Rhian Sheehan crafts delicate yet frequently somber experimental ambient soundscapes by weaving together orchestral passages, global folk instruments, guitars, an array of synthesizers, field recordings, and everyday objects such as music boxes. The New Zealand composer and producer launched his recording career with the 2001 full-length Paradigm Shift. Subsequent original works accompanied an expanding portfolio of scoring assignments that ranged across film, video games, television, commercials, museum installations, planetarium presentations, and theme-park attractions. Following the 2015 release Live at the Wellington Opera House, his 2018 studio album A Quiet Divide marked his broadest canvas to date, enlisting more than a dozen guest musicians that included players from the Stroma FilmWorks Orchestra.

Born in Nelson and now residing in Wellington, Sheehan first surfaced in the early 2000s via Paradigm Shift, initiating a sustained association with LOOP Recordings. Produced by Sheehan alongside Neil Aldridge, Bevan Smith, and Matthew Mitchell, Tiny Blue Biosphere appeared in mid-2004; before year’s end the remix set Music for Nature Documentaries was also issued. New Zealand Landscapes (Northland to Antarctica), featuring photography by Grant Sheehan, arrived in 2008. Standing in Silence followed in 2009, its limited-edition CD packaged with a music box that figures prominently on one track. That same year Sheehan’s music appeared in the New Zealand television drama The Cult and the TV movie Reservoir Hill. His EP Seven Tales of the North Wind surfaced in 2011, while NBC incorporated his compositions into its London Olympics broadcasts the next year. Stories from Elsewhere, issued in 2013, was recorded largely by the artist himself, with supplementary performances and engineering supplied by Lee Prebble of The Black Seeds. Captured during concerts in June 2010 and November 2013, Live at the Wellington Opera House reached listeners in 2015. The documentary Belief: The Possession of Janet Moses began its international festival run that year; Sheehan’s accompanying score received a separate release in 2017. In 2018 A Quiet Divide appeared, its roster of contributors again featuring longtime associates Prebble and Ryan Youens, while the New Zealand theatrical release of the film Stray showcased an original Sheehan score.