Rebecca Patterson
The New York Times describes Ms. Patterson as having an "uncommonly warm and rounded tone," and the Washington Post praises her for “a stunning account of the movement Praise to the Eternity of Jesus”, from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Ms. Patterson co-founded the piano-clarinet quartet, Antares, while a student at Yale, which took top prizes the following year (1997) in the Fischoff, Coleman, Yellow Springs, and Carmel Chamber Music Competitions (then called Elm City Ensemble). In 2002, Antares was awarded the top prize in the Concert Artists Guild competition in New York City in recognition of its exciting and emotionally charged performances. Later (2007) they were managed by Sciolino Artist Management.
Rebecca dedicated over fifteen years to chamber music, contemporary music, and teaching with Antares, and also recorded and commissioned several dozen new pieces for the quartet formation. Their final recording was released in 2011, which revisited two significant yet previously unrecorded works from 1978: Shadowed Narrative by Roger Reynolds and Tashi by Peter Lieberson. This CD was featured as “Choice of the Month” in the January 2012 issue of BBC Music Magazine. Other releases with Antares include, Eclipse with Innova Recordings, and Red River by Mason Bates with MSR Classics label. Antares finally disbanded in 2012 after completing a successful fifteen-year run.
More recently, in 2012 Ms. Patterson was appointed Principal Cello of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO), and in 2019 was a recipient of a Ford Foundation Award in Community Service for her educational work through the symphony. Between 2014-18, she served on the faculty of the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where she curated a Baroque cello curriculum for a student as well as performed with the Baroque ensemble there, Collegium Musicum.
Ms. Patterson received her B.M. from the Eastman School of Music and her M.M. from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Paul Katz and Aldo Parisot, respectively. While at Eastman she was winner of the Gibbs Chamber Orchestra Concerto competition, as well as the recipient of the full-merit Lois Smith Rogers Scholarship. At Yale she was a recipient of the Ender Scholarship.