Rebecca Plack has given acclaimed solo concerts on both sides
of the Atlantic, at the International Great Romantics Festival in Hamilton, Canada and the ATERForum Festival in Ferrara, Italy. In 2006, she made her London and Budapest recital debuts as winner of the 2004 Los Angeles International Liszt Competition. Other solo appearances have included recitals for Music at Saint Matthew’s in San Francisco and the Crowden School’s Afternoons at Four series in Berkeley, California; in October 2006 she will perform Liszt songs at San Francisco’s Old First Church. She is also co-founder of the imaginative new recital series MUSIC MATTERS.
 
Ms. Plack is a true singer-scholar. She holds degrees in voice from the San Francisco Conservatory and Manhattan School of Music, graduated magna cum laude in music from Princeton University and is finishing her PhD in musicology from Cornell; she was also a Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival. At Manhattan School, Will Crutchfield invited her not only to perform but also to teach Italian diction and Baroque ornamentation in his prestigious Handel Project. At Cornell, she taught singing as well as subjects ranging from Opera to History of Rock to Freshman Writing; she was also privileged to work on the Köchel catalogue under Neal Zaslaw, and to participate in the historic performance program with Malcolm Bilson. In 2002 she was awarded an Edison Fellowship to research old recordings at the British Library; her work there led to her Ph.D. dissertation, “The Substance of Style: How Singing Creates Sound in Lieder Recordings, 1898-1948.”

As soprano soloist, Ms. Plack has performed oratorios of Bach, Handel, and Haydn at the Aspen and West Marin music festivals, and with the Ithaca Community Chorus. She was featured in Lully’s Le Carnavale Masquerade with lutenist Paul O’Dette and has also performed the title roles Handel’s Semele and Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea. Her wide-ranging stage repertoire includes Mary Turner in Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing with Ithaca Opera, and she was twice invited to join the Aspen Opera Center, where she sang works by 20th-century composers Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Benjamin Britten, and Bright Sheng.  In New York, she was one
of three singers selected to present the world premiere of “L’Invitation au Voyage” by French composer Pierre Charvet.
 
Ms. Plack was born in Texarkana, Texas and grew up in San Francisco and Davis, California. She now lives in Davis where she maintains a private voice studio.