Ryan Cayabyab

At the turn of the 21st century, Cayabyab was considering a move to migrate abroad with his family.

Danding Cojuangco (President of the San Miguel Corporation) offered him a position to produce and perform new music to add to the Philippine music scene; Cayabyab accepted the offer as Executive and Artistic Director of the San Miguel Foundation for the Performing Arts.

He served there for several years until the sudden closure of the foundation.

As music director, conductor and accompanist, Cayabyab has performed in the United States with leading Philippine music figures, at venues including Avery Fisher Hall in the Lincoln Center in New York City; Carnegie Hall (both the Main and Recital halls) in New York; the Kennedy Center and the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.; the Shrine in Los Angeles; the Orpheum in Vancouver; and Circus Maximus of Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip.

He has traveled as music director in most of the Southeast Asian cities, in the cities of Australia as well as in (Germany), France, Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States.

He has worked in the same shows with Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra, as well as conducted the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra for special performances of American jazz singer Diane Schuur and pianist Jim Chappel.

He has performed as music director in command performances for King Hasan II in Rabat, Morocco, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia of Spain in Manila, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in Tangiers, Queen Beatrix at the Noordeinde Palace in the Netherlands, and U.S. President Bill Clinton in Boston, Massachusetts.

In Manila, he has conducted the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines for a concert of Philippine and American contemporary music; and the Manila Chamber Orchestra for a concert of his original works.

Raymundo Cipriano Pujante Cayabyab (born May 4, 1954), known professionally as Ryan Cayabyab, is a Filipino musician, composer and conductor regarded as one of the pillars and icons of Original Pilipino Music (OPM).

He was the Executive and Artistic Director for several years for the defunct San Miguel Foundation for the Performing Arts.

Born Raymundo Cayabyab 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.

After graduating from college, he became a full-time professor for the Department of Composition and Music Theory in the UP Diliman for almost two decades.

Cayabyab composed a jingle for an advertisement of the softdrink brand Sarsi, entitled "Sarsi: Angat sa Iba" (Sarsi: Different from Others) in 1989.

The commercial became the most creative TV ad of that year.

Famous for composing the Da Coconut Nut Song performed by his Smokey Mountain band, Cayabyab's current project includes the Ryan Cayabyab Singers (RCS), a group of seven young adult singers comparable to Smokey Mountain in the early 1990s.

After FreemantleMedia decided not to renew the Philippine Idol franchise, Cayabyab transferred to rival show Pinoy Dream Academy, replacing Jim Paredes as the show's headmaster.

PDA 2 started on June 14, 2008.

He also became the chairman of the board of judges for GMA Network's musical-reality show To The Top.

He is the executive director of the PhilPop MusicFest Foundation Inc., the organization behind the Philippine Popular Music Festival.

This songwriting competition for amateurs and professionals puts the spotlight on songwriters and encourages Filipinos to preserve their unique musical identity.

Cayabyab only wrote at least three songs in the 2010s, due to focusing on promoting Original Pilipino Music for most of the period.

He was named National Artist of the Philippines for Music in 2018.

His works range from commissioned full-length ballets, theater musicals, choral pieces, a Mass set to the unaccompanied chorus, and orchestral pieces, to commercial recordings of popular music, film scores and television specials.

In 2020, due to the idle time caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Cayabyab was able to write at least ten songs in 2020 alone, two of which was made available in Spotify.

Under collaboration with Philippine fruit juice brand Locally, Cayabyab did the composition for "Prutas Pilipinas" a 2020 contemporary folk song which featured fruits cultivated in the Philippines.