Rebecca Rowe
Rebecca Rowe is passionate about bringing contemporary music to new audiences in a way that is exciting and challenging, yet meaningful and accessible. She is interested in presenting music in new ways, and in new spaces, particularly interdisciplinary projects involving musicians, artists, film-makers and writers.
Rebecca has composed soundtracks for animated films and theatre productions, and she has worked collaboratively with directors and poets in setting their images and words to music.
Rebecca has received great acclaim for her orchestral, chamber and choral work, enjoying many commissions from artists as diverse as the Dunedin Consort, Cappella Nova, the Hilliard Ensemble, recorder virtuoso John Turner, contemporary music ensemble ONE VOICE, Northern College Aberdeen, tenor Steven Griffin, the Allegri String Quartet, and the innovative Chroma Ensemble, to name but a few.
Rebecca’s musical training began in South Yorkshire, as a cellist and pianist, before moving to study at the University of Hull, and later the University of Edinburgh. She holds an MMus in Composition from Edinburgh, having studied with Nigel Osborne. Rebecca is a founder member of The Squair Mile Consort of Viols, and is a former Artistic Director and Conductor of Edinburgh University Contemporary Music Ensemble.
Known also as a highly-skilled conductor and interpreter of contemporary music, she has conducted chamber orchestras, contemporary music ensembles and large choirs, ranging from children’s school choirs through to University ensembles.
Rebecca’s work has been broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio 3 and the BBC World Service. Short films which she scored have been broadcast on STV and bought by BBC TV.
Rebecca received an award from The English Poetry and Song Society, for the 1994 work No Sad Songs, a setting of a Christina Rossetti poem. In 2005 Rebecca was invited to be a panel-member at StAnza where she took part in an illuminating debate on Words and Music. Between 2010 and 2012, she worked on a series of multidisciplinary projects with film-director Alastair Cook.
The 2015 collaborative project Turning the Elements, resulted in the commission Three Pieces for Soprano and Clarinet, for Frances Cooper and Joanna Nicholson. For this endeavour, new poetry was also commissioned from prominent Scottish poets Jane McKie and Stewart Sanderson, which formed the texts of the songs. This project, also involving visual projections, was unveiled at Aberdeen’s prestigious SOUND Festival as well as in Jedburgh for Book Week Scotland and at the StAnza Poetry Festival in St. Andrews in March 2016. In 2017, Rebecca’s new work Kaleidoscope, for chamber sextet, was premiered by the Chroma Ensemble in London. 2018 saw an exciting new work for the group Fliskmahoy! which was premiered in Inverness in September that year.
