STEPHANIE RATCLIFF
Biography
Vancouver-based indie folk-pop artist Stephanie Ratcliff is refreshingly authentic, rustic, and relatable. Her music sparks a nostalgia for a simpler time and provokes listeners to reminisce, hope and dream. Stephanie embarked on her musical story-telling journey at the age of 16, when she picked up her cousin’s acoustic guitar. Within moments of strumming her first three chords, she was hooked. She then went out and bought her own guitar – a $50 classical guitar from a local pawn shop – and began singing her songs to her bedroom walls and her younger sister. Here she learned to freely express her questions, fears, and joys through her music. Though sharing her music publicly took a back-seat for many years, Stephanie kept writing song after song, quietly growing in her craft and unknowingly waiting until the time was just right… After a significant life-altering season of life, she finally walked through her fear, embraced her voice and stories, and began sharing her songs with others. And she still is.
Stephanie’s music connects to the breathtaking beauty found in the gradual growth and rebirth of the natural world, as well as the same unsuspecting beauty and rhythms found in the human experience. Her music is conceptualized by Stephanie herself as defiant art: “Where there is so much fear, uncertainty, suspicion of ‘other’ and outright violence, I want to help counter that with music filled with beauty and hope.” In light of this, her songs create a sensory oasis in the desert while still acknowledging the quiet ache of longing and living in the tension of what is not-yet.
With ethereal, cinematic sounds, Stephanie continues to write songs that embody a level of depth and mature poeticism so often missing in today’s mainstream, and delivers them with a voice that bares human vulnerability and emotional transparency. This is art speaking to the darkness with beauty and light.
Stephanie has released two EPs over the past year and a half with her latest, “Land in UnknownPlaces”, being released in July 2018. In October 2018 she won the Western Canadian Music Award for Spiritual Artist of the Year.
