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"Rebeca Omordia is half Romanian, half Nigerian – and it’s a powerful combination! Rebeca’s technique knows no bounds but, more importantly, she plays with a depth of insight and understanding which is all too rare today."
- Julian Lloyd Webber, London Magazine
Life & Work
Bio:
London based award-winning Nigerian-Romanian pianist Rebeca Omordia was born in Romania to a Romanian mother and a Nigerian father. Having begun to establish a profile in her native country, she moved to the UK to study at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and later at Trinity College of Music in London. She holds Doctor in Music degree from the National University of Music in Bucharest, Romania.
Recently featured on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, and as Artist of the Month in the Classical Music Magazine, Rebeca Omordia is known as a vibrant, exciting virtuoso throughout the UK and overseas whose work has changed the face of classical music.
Described by the Guardian, Nigeria as “the pianist who cast a spell on Lagos”, in recent seasons Rebeca Omordia has toured Nigeria and the USA as a recitalist and she has performed as a soloist with MUSON (Musical Society of Nigeria) Symphony Orchestra and with Romanian National Radio Orchestra.
An “African classical music pioneer” (BBC World Service) , Rebeca released her CD “EKELE” in 2018, featuring piano music by African composers, described as an "appealing album" (BBC Music Magazine), "fascinating programme" (Gramophone Magazine) and “beautifully delivered recital" (The Sunday Times). In 2019 she launched world's first ever African Concert Series in London, a series of monthly concerts featuring music by African composers.
Rebeca Omordia has worked with an array of international musicians, including a three year- partnership with world renowned British cellist Julian Lloyd Webber; they toured the UK performing in venues such as the Wigmore Hall and Kings Place in London, at Highgrove, the residence of Prince of Wales, and they made live broadcasts for BBC Radio 3. Further musical partnerships have included performances and recordings for Meridian Records with South African double bass virtuoso Leon Bosch, a recording for English Music Records with cellist Joseph Spooner and collaborations with cellists Raphael Wallfisch, Jiaxin Lloyd Webber and Chineke! Chamber ensemble. Rebeca's CD with British pianist Mark Bebbington, “The Piano Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams”, reached no. 3 in the UK’s Specialist Classical Music Chart. Rebeca’s arrangement for cello and harp of “Seal Lullaby” by Grammy-winning American composer Eric Whitacre was released on Deutsche Grammophon.
Rebeca was a jury member in the 13th HRH Princess Lalla Meryem International Piano Competition in Rabat, Morocco.
In 2016 she was awarded the Honorary Membership Award from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire for her services to music.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).