ABOUT REBECCA

An avid educator as well as performer and composer, Rebecca combines a Master’s degree in Music from Georgia State with over 20 years of performance, recording, and teaching experience. A native Tennessean and Rhodes College graduate, she has three CD's to her credit, a vocal jazz arrangement on the Sony/BMG record label, and a combined performance, recording, and touring resume spanning the U.S., England, Scotland, Wales, France, and Japan in choral ensembles of all sizes and as a solo performer. She has opened for Mel Torme, worked with Mac Frampton and the Hollywood Hills Orchestra, the Atlanta Pops, and co-founded the acclaimed vocal jazz quartet, South City Voices. Rebecca has also appeared as a performing artist/lecturer with nationally renowned author Dr. Philip Furia at MTSU for a tribute to songwriter Johnny Mercer. She teamed once again with the South City Voices for the second album of pop recording artist Brent Cash on the German record label, Marina Records, released in 2011. 

On the writing side, this award-winning singer/songwriter released her debut album of original music “To A Warmer Heart” in 2001, which featured Rebecca’s multi-faceted musical skills as well as that of other outstanding musicians.  She has arranged for big band and orchestra, and composed and arranged songs for vocal jazz and intermediate classical piano.  Her musical composition setting to “The Mirror Poems” won national recognition in the 2012 NATS Art Song Composition Competition. 

From an early age, Rebecca was fortunate to have music lessons, learning to read music through the classical piano literature of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, among others. Receiving superior ratings in piano competitions took her to Belmont in Nashville, TN to perform in recitals at an early age. Years later, as Rebecca’s singing career blossomed, she was never without her muse- the piano. Returning to school to obtain her Master’s Degree in Music from Georgia State University, she rediscovered the lush chords and fascinating rhythms that comprise jazz.  

Today she is proud of her ongoing roster of students she has been privileged to teach over the years. Many have won scholarship and leading roles in musical productions, exceled in competitions and festivals, produced their own albums, advanced to perform professionally, received local and national recognition in Billboard magazine, Time Warner New Artist of the Year, and been chosen to work with judges such as Pharrell Williams on the NBC hit TV series “The Voice”. 

Versatile as both performer and teacher, Rebecca has maintained a private teaching studio serving the north Atlanta community and has been singing on the Atlanta jazz scene and in the southeast since the 1990’s. In the fall of 2013 she joined the Lamar University Music Faculty in Beaumont, Texas as a full-time Instructor of Music- Voice, and Director of Vocal Jazz Ensembles, where in just three years she formed and developed the Cardinal Jazz Singers, taught music theory, piano, master classes, and applied instruction in contemporary singing and vocal jazz while continuing to perform in the area.  Recent performances include the American Cancer Society Walk, Lamar University’s Cardinal Calvalcade Concert, House Concerts for Lamar University’s French Circle, and Featured Vocalist with the Robert Ceballos Trio at Eddie V’s Jazz Lounge in Houston. Among other organizations, Rebecca is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), and the Jazz Education Network (JEN).   In the fall of 2017 she  relocated to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill-Pittsboro area of North Carolina, where she has been sharing her gifts with North Carolinians in the surrounding community, including a rewarding teaching association with the Chapel Hill School for the Musical Arts.   Her private lesson business was fortunate enough to thrive during the pandemic as she and countless other music educators and musicians temporarily made a permanent shift to online teaching and coaching.  As we emerge from the severity of the pandemic and into a new era of "normalcy", she is excited to resume gigging and recording projects, all while continuing to share her teaching gifts with countless students, both in person and online throughout the US, and even beyond.