Biography:
Music Bio
Rebecca’s career as a musician and teacher has been both rich and varied. Her musical studies began in the classical realm with the clarinet, culminating in 1996 when she graduated with a master’s degree in performance and musicology from the University of Victoria.
Since then, she has focused her interest on Celtic music and improvisation on the harp, attending many Celtic harp workshops all over North America and Ireland, where she studied with such notables as Kim Robertson and Sharlene Wallace.
Rebecca’s approach to playing and teaching the harp draws on her classical background and combines it with her passion for Celtic music. Her teaching philosophy focuses on balancing disciplined technique with improvisation and creativity.
Rebecca regularly gives harp workshops at Place des Arts, which attract students from all over the province. She is active in the Vancouver folk music scene, performing around the Lower Mainland as both a soloist and with groups such as the Maenads and Triskellion.
Rebecca works as a freelance musician, playing at many special events; her audiences have included the President of Ireland and the International Bar Association. She has also applied her skills as a studio musician and has been featured on CD’s such as the Maenads and Orra Chan by Teresa Doyle. Rebecca keeps a busy schedule of teaching and performing, as well as studying Irish dance. Visit her website at www.dancingharp.com.
Visual Arts Bio
Rebecca Blair has been an active member of the arts community in Vancouver, which includes a decade of teaching at Place des Arts. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Lethbridge and a Master’s of Arts from the University of Victoria. For nine years Rebecca taught drawing courses at Whatcom Community College in Washington State.
Rebecca’s art experiences have also taken her to Italy where she taught for a semester in Florence and attended a fresco restoration workshop in Altamura, Puglia. She has participated in several local art events such as the East Vancouver Cultural Crawl and art shows at Place des Arts. She attends the life drawing sessions at Vancouver’s Basic Inquiry studio.
Rebecca’s body of work focuses on watercolour landscapes and portraits in various media which is inspired by her travels both local and abroad. She is presently writing a book on the 17th-century Dutch artist, Jan Vermeer.
