Since winning first place at the First International Clarinet Competition in Kraków, Poland in 1994, Rebecca Rischin has established an international reputation as a clarinet soloist, pedagogue and author. She has performed as a concerto soloist and recitalist in England, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Serbia, Canada, Colombia, and the United States, including at Carnegie Hall, where her solo debut recital in March 2014 was met with a standing ovation.
Her 2017 Centaur Records compact disc of fantasies for clarinet and piano in a Romantic style with pianist Youmee Kim, Clarinet Fantasies, received rave reviews in Fanfare magazine: Rischin won praise for her “enormous virtuosity…whipped cream legato… and beautiful phrasing…Rischin has a superb technique and a musicality to match; her legato line is a joy, and she shades melodies as a singer might... Rischin breathes magical life into the music’s glorious melodies. There is actually a palpable feel of the music ‘breathing,’ of natural inhalation and exhalation, both on the small scale and the larger scale... This is a wonderfully life-enhancing disc...This fine release should have no trouble finding an audience. Collectors of Romantic fantasies for wind soloists will welcome these new additions to the catalog, and devotees of fine clarinet playing will certainly want to hear Rischin and Kim perform them.” Rischin’s compact disc of unaccompanied clarinet compositions, One of a Kind (Centaur, 2009) also received critical acclaim.
Rischin is currently professor of clarinet and woodwind division chair at Ohio University, where she received the 2002 College of Fine Arts Outstanding Teacher Award and was twice nominated for the university-wide Presidential Teacher Award. Her students come from all over the United States, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, and have won awards both here and abroad. She has given masterclasses and coachings at universities and schools of music nationwide and has published numerous articles, including for The Clarinet's renowned "Master Class" series (March 1999) and for The American Music Teacher 's pedagogy series (October/November 2002).
Her ground-breaking book, For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet (Cornell University Press, 2003; 2006), on which she has lectured worldwide in both English and French, is considered the definitive work on the subject. It is now out in French, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, and in paperback and has been adapted into a screenplay to be made into a motion picture: “By turns moving, astonishing, challenging and funny, it is a story that deserves to be heard. Strongly recommended.” (BBC Music Magazine). “The clarinetist Rebecca Rischin has written a captivating book…her research dispels several long-cherished myths about the 1941 première…Rischin lovingly brings to life the other musicians…who played with Messiaen, the pianist at the première.” (The New Yorker). “Rischin's illuminating look at the participating personalities and historical context of the creation of Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps, one of the greatest artistic triumphs of the twentieth century, provides valuable insight into the complex circumstances surrounding this extraordinary premiere and allows us a very special glimpse into the warmth and strength of the human spirit” (Kent Nagano, music director, Montreal Symphony).
A native of San Francisco, Rischin was selected by the clarinetist Richard Stoltzman to be the featured soloist at the 1985 San Francisco Mayor's Command Performance. She holds the Bachelor of Arts, cum laude and Master of Music degrees from Yale University, the Doctor of Music degree from Florida State University, and the performance Diplôme from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, where she studied under the auspices of a Harriet Hale Woolley grant, awarded in 1993 to only two other visual and performing artists in the United States. Her teachers include David Shifrin, Guy Deplus, Frank Kowalsky, Donald Carroll, Pascal Moragues, Gregory Smith, Joaquin Valdepeñas and David Weber.