REBECCA ZAPEN

Violinist, vocalist, and songwriter Rebecca Zapen won Best Album & Song (cabaret genre) in the Just Plain Folks Awards 2009, receiving 5 nominations. A classically-trained violinist and versatile musician, Rebecca was named Jacksonville's Musician of the Year 2008. Recent career highlights include her performance as the musical guest on Public Radio International show Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know?; original songs in a national promotion for Crocs Shoes; winning 2nd in the Bushman World Ukulele Video Contest and her resulting endorsement with Bushman Music Works. Zapen was a Finalist in the 2007 DiscMakers' Independent Music World Series. Other highlights include appearances as jazz vocalist with the Hollywood Philharmonic Orchestra, and as the mandolin soloist in Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra's production of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. She is an award-winning composer, earning the Silver Medal of Excellence for Best Use of Music in a Short Film at the 2008 Park City Film Music Festival. Her original songs appear in Look Both Ways, which won for Best Music in the 2009 San Francisco Seven Day Film Festival. Rebecca's light vocals and violin were heard on early commercials for Truvia sweetener in 2008-2009. Her music has been featured on NPR's All Songs Considered: Open Mic. Past performances include Florida Folk Fest, Gamble Rogers Fest, Jacksonville Jazz Fest, and venues such as Hotel Cafe (L.A.), The Bitter End (NYC), and Paganini Auditorium (Italy). Rebecca's "dreamy, ethereal vocals swoon and sweep atop sublime melodies and infectiously charming lyrics, instantly hypnotic and effortlessly charming" (Subba-Cultcha UK). Accompanying herself on ukulele, guitar, and violin, Zapen's music is "mellow, creative, happy, and smart" (Celebrity Cafe).

Zapen's first musical memory was that of sitting beneath the grand piano as a toddler, her ears filled by the sounds of her mother playing Chopin, Beethoven, and Mozart. Her classical music education began at age 3 with the Suzuki Violin Method, and culminating with her graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude with music and biology degrees, attending Florida State University on a music scholarship. Her college years were filled with opera, orchestra, chamber music, and late night jazz jams. It was at FSU that she began a love affair with jazz, especially bossa nova. Since then, her musical involvements have been with groups whose styles include jazz, swing, classical, klezmer, country, folk, rock, and spoken word. Zapen has performed with or opened for artists such as Vassar Clements, Big Sandy & His Fly Rite Boys, Tommy Womack, Trisha Yearwood, Chris Botti, Anathallo, and David Bazan, and has played in musical groups, symphony orchestras, and music festivals in U.S., Great Britain, Switzerland, and Italy.

Her versatile violin playing, pure clear voice, and ability to write nostalgia-infused music have earned her comparisons to Astrud Gilberto, Suzanne Vega, Leonard Cohen, and The Ditty Bops. Her influences include Stephane Grappelli, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chet Baker, and Nick Drake.

Zapen founded her own record label in 2003, naming it Bashert, which is a Yiddish word meaning "destiny" or "fate". Rebecca's recordings include Japanese Bathhouse, released in Fall 2005 after a European summer tour, with songs about anything from pirate love gone wrong to bread crumb trails to nudity in foreign lands. Relix describes Japanese Bathhouse: "Nothing adequately prepares for the way in which her deeply personal album instantaneously envelops and never loses its grip.... The title song and others bring to mind no less than early solo McCartney and Brian Wilson's SMiLE.... One of those near-perfect hidden gems..." During ZAPENation Tour 2006, Rebecca's acoustic folk-jazz-twang trio (with dobro and double bass) gave 22 performances during its six-week tour of the United States.

Her discography also includes debut release Hummingbird (2003), laden with bossa nova and blending violin, voice, sax, marimba, and rhythm section into a warm spacious sound; self-titled folk EP Michelle Payne & Rebecca Zapen (2003); and Songs of Bother and Woe (2005) which gives a taste of her nostalgic indie folk-pop, with a sound that ranges from simple ukulele and vocals to lush arrangements of strings and brass, and musical accents from melodica and glockenspiel. ZapStar (2006), features the Rebecca Zapen / Gary Starling Group's interpretations of jazz standards and even a couple of Beatles classics via their combo of guitar, upright bass, and drums, with Zapen on violin and vocals.

Her newest album of original acoustic folk-pop, Nest, is slated for a Fall 2011 release, featuring Appalachian-tinged "Colorado", auto-biographical songs "Grandfather's Song", "Jacaranda", and "Lakewood", and lilting bossa nova number "Ledge".