Field of Dreams

posted in: Artist Features

You don’t often find jocks onstage singing opera, but Ryan Hill isn’t your average guy. A baseball scholarship led Hill to Ottawa University, where he honed his swing on the field and his voice in the university choir. Guitar and piano practice and classical vocal training began to eclipse baseball as Hill developed his sound and evolved into a prodigious singer-songwriter. Believe introduces you to Hill’s most powerful instrument: a malleable voice that ripples up and down the scales. The guy can emote, and does so with just a simple acoustic guitar for much of the song. It isn’t until the three-minute mark that Hill unleashes the rest of his arsenal. Tracks like One More Time and What Do I Know are codas to the emotional turbulence of Believe. The latter is a dark and dusty waltz where Hill proclaims, I’ve done all I can do. I’m only a man. But man, is he good at what he does.