Hello!
We are Rose and Graham and we created AYANE to give ourselves a place where our imaginations can have free rein and we can indulge in our love of music, fantasy and fairy tales.
In essence AYANE is a creative studio; somewhere that we can create, explore and share our own fairy tales and the magical worlds they are set in.
Our projects weave together music, illustration, animation, photography, words and so much more. Housed within our ‘Imaginarium’ each project has its own dedicated journal where you can follow our progress and adventures as we create. You can also find these journals on our YouTube channel.
We really hope you enjoy what you find here and that it inspires you to give your imagination a little more freedom to play.
As you are here, you are probably curious to know more about us and AYANE. So if you're sitting comfortably, we'll begin...
THE STORY BEGINS
The story of AYANE begins one cold Sunday morning in late November 2015 when I woke up with the thought 'I want to learn the harp’ echoing in my mind… as you do!
Music has always been really important to me and an inextricable part of who I am. Throughout my childhood I was a member of several ensembles, orchestras and choirs, as a flautist and soprano soloist respectively. However the long and unsociable hours my career demanded meant that at this point I had little time to dedicate to music and creative endeavours.
This desire to start learning the harp was not new, it was something I had wanted to do for a long time. But what was new was the fact that it was now accompanied by a strong tug like feeling of ‘I need to do this’. I have never experienced anything like it before, but I decided to make time to follow it and see where it led me.
I fell in love with the harp from the moment I played my first notes. Three years later after many, many hours of practice and studying theory, that tug led me to study a music course at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.
Encouraged by my efforts with the harp, Graham rediscovered his love for playing the piano. He had previously played and performed in competitions as a child, but like me the pressures of university and after that a demanding career meant that he had little time to devote to the piano.
He also took an interest in the Trinity course content and I often found that I had a very willing study partner. Like me he was keen to learn how to compose and also wanted to fill in some of the gaps in his knowledge about music history and theory.
Ballet & Fairy Tales
While I was at Trinity I discovered that I really enjoyed writing music that told the story of an imagined scene or happening.
As the daughter of a classically trained ballerina (and a keen dancer myself) I grew up surrounded by the beautiful music from ballet scores and the fairy tales behind them. This is what sparked my love of fairy tales and fantasy stories. The combination of ballet steps, fairy tales and music is a magical one to me; when I’m dancing the music and magic become almost tangible and it makes me feel alive and free. While I’ve never been more than an amateur, I have danced on stage a fair amount and choreographed many dances over the years.
So I guess it’s not really surprising that a little while later I found myself writing pieces of music inspired by my favourite fairy tales and ballet scores. Over time these pieces continued to evolve and before I knew it, I had started writing ballets based on my own fairy tales.
The first of which being ‘The Nymphs of Spring’. This ballet and its fairy tale grew organically out of an idea Graham and I had to write a piece of music inspired by everything we love about Spring. We began the project with the intention of writing an orchestral piece depicting an enchanted forest scene waking from its winter slumber.
Within a couple of weeks we had written a short piece, one that we were really happy with as it seemed to describe the scene we had envisioned really well, but we both had this feeling that the piece wanted to be something much more. With the luxury of time on our side during lockdown we decided to keep exploring the world we had created to try and figure out what the rest of the story was, so we headed to our bookshelves in search of inspiration and quickly got lost down a rabbit hole of research.
Over the next couple of months we crafted the framework of our story and we began using it to help us write some more of our piece. Each time we listened back to what we had written, the imagery and the story behind the piece became more and more clear until I found myself getting up and stepping through the story. A little while later I realised that my feet were making some of the well-drilled patterns from my many years of ballet training.
Suddenly the ideas for both the music and the story started flowing like a spring waterfall and it became clear that our little spring piece wanted to be a piece of ballet music and part of something much bigger.
This is how A Y A N E came to be; it grew out of our spring piece and all the ideas it inspired.
ARt, DESIGN & photography
I was very lucky to have incredible art teachers and arty friends at senior school who encouraged me to explore and play with my ideas in lots of different media and also to research the work of other artists. I loved the way we would create and evolve projects together and grow them into really multifaceted and considered pieces. This way of working has been and continues to be the foundation for all my creative endeavors.
While I didn’t study art beyond school, I did continue drawing, painting and photography as hobbies when time and life allowed. Many moons ago, missing a creative outlet, I created a jewellery brand (as a side hustle) and I went on to win several major awards with my designs. The pieces I designed were inspired by my love of nature and the natural world, each one had a story behind it that referenced ancient symbolism and folklore. Sustainability and conservation were at the core of the brand from day one as I wanted to do everything in my power to protect the beauty of the natural world.
As each of our Imaginarium projects exist in their own magical world, they give me an amazing opportunity to really lean into the style of art I love to create; from concept sketches of our characters and their costumes to landscape and nature photography to provide inspiration for paintings of the worlds our stories are set in, as well as the freedom to design and create the jewellery and artefacts which are key to each of our fairy tales. The possibilities are endless, which is so incredibly exciting.
AYAnE
I realised through the early part of developing ‘The Nymphs of Spring’ that I need music, stories and art in my life almost as much as food, water and air otherwise I wilt. So in February 2022 I made the big and scary decision to walk away from my 18 year career as an aeronautical engineer to concentrate on building A Y A N E. I just knew deep down that if I didn’t dedicate my time and energy to exploring everthing that we created A Y A N E for, it would mean having to let go of something that I really loved doing and that I would forever be wondering ‘what if…?’.
Graham will be playing a supporting role in all our plans, but he will be involved in everything and help me as much as his work commitments allow. There is a lot for us both to learn in order to realise our projects, but luckily we enjoy a good challenge and love learning new things.
We chose to name our creative studio A Y A N E (pronounced ‘eye-anne-knee’ if you’re wondering!) because it means ‘colourful sound’ in Japanese and our choice of a hummingbird for our logo is because they symbolise joy and playfulness. We designed the shape of her wings to have echoes of the strings of a harp and the profile of its harmonic curve.
We really hope that you enjoy the content we create and following our adventures as we learn, grow and create.
Rose and Graham ✨